'I am the Lord's servant' Mary answered. 'May it be to me as you have said.'
- Luke 1:38
As Pastor Wayde Goodall shared from this passage last night, an old song just kept playing in my mind, by Don Moen
Chorus:
Be it unto me
According to your Word
According to your promises
I can stand secure
Carve upon my heart
The truth that sets me free
According to your Word O Lord
Be it unto me
You promised your blood will deliver
Lord, we believe it's true
You promised us joy like a river
Lord we receive it from you
These things you have spoken
And you're bringing to pass
This world's disappearing
But your word will last
Chorus
You promised to carry our sorrows
Lord, we believe it's true
You promised unending tomorrows
Lord we receive them from you
You will be our provider
In your word it's revealed
And by the stripes that you've bowed
Lord we have been healed
Chorus
A timely reminder. Lord, may I be like Mary who obeyed and trusted in You although she had no inclination of the consequences of her obedience.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
You Never Need to Be Afraid of God's Plan - by Rev Wayde Goodall
Well, it's always nice to have Rev Wayde speak in church , all the way from USA. And his message was very very timely ( as a prelude to Christmas). The main message was taken from Luke 1:26-55.
He starts of with quoting the Scriptures from 2 Chronicls 16:9 ( TLT):
'The eye of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.'
And then he proceeds to talk about Mary, who never asked to be worshipped ( as the Catholics do) but was somehow a chosen teenager by God to carry and birth Jesus, the Son of God. In Luke 1:29-30, the angel Gabriel speaks to Mary and she is confused and disturbed ( and rightly so!). The common fears that Mary had ( and so do we):
1) Fear of criticism that says ' what will people think of me?
2) Fear of the supernatural that says ' what is going to happen to me?'
3) Fear of being inadequate which says 'how will I be able to handle this?'
4) Fear of change which says ' how will this change my life?'
Which is why the most repeated command in the Bible is FEAR NOT.
And the reason why we don't need to fear God's plan for our lives is:
1) We can be certain of His presence in our life
2) We can trust in God's supernatural power in our life
3) We can be sure that God will fulfil His promises in our life
Wow! How true is that!! Amen!
He starts of with quoting the Scriptures from 2 Chronicls 16:9 ( TLT):
'The eye of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.'
And then he proceeds to talk about Mary, who never asked to be worshipped ( as the Catholics do) but was somehow a chosen teenager by God to carry and birth Jesus, the Son of God. In Luke 1:29-30, the angel Gabriel speaks to Mary and she is confused and disturbed ( and rightly so!). The common fears that Mary had ( and so do we):
1) Fear of criticism that says ' what will people think of me?
2) Fear of the supernatural that says ' what is going to happen to me?'
3) Fear of being inadequate which says 'how will I be able to handle this?'
4) Fear of change which says ' how will this change my life?'
Which is why the most repeated command in the Bible is FEAR NOT.
And the reason why we don't need to fear God's plan for our lives is:
1) We can be certain of His presence in our life
2) We can trust in God's supernatural power in our life
3) We can be sure that God will fulfil His promises in our life
Wow! How true is that!! Amen!
Saturday, December 5, 2009
LIFELONG VISION - by Ps David Lim ( Grace AOG)
Today's sermon in church was very timely for me......a reminder that God never waste any of our experiences.....This sermon was delivered by my church's senior pastor (Ps David Lim) from 2 Timothy 4:6-8
For I am already being poured out like a drink offering and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award me on that day - and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
This is the 1st part of a 3 part sermon.
Begins with saying that a life-long vision grow through major phases in one's life.How we face the challenges of each phase determines when and if you fulfil the vision. These phases are:
1) Salvation Phase ( the most visionary thing you can do)
- this is where we begin and understand that our sins are forgiven
- this is where we hope for the future and the promise of eternal life
- now is when we live out Christ' life
- we start building up on God's word and claim his promises
- we live in the light of his return
- we start to win others to Christ
2) Discipleship phase ( Let His Word diret our steps_
- find mentors --> not physically, but through books, godly leaders by watching and learning from their actions and behaviour
- we discover our gifts and passion
- we start building character ( pure motives and integrity) so that we can:
a) have victory over temptation
b) grow through hurts
c) be faithful in the small things
d) do not side track
e) choose to glorify God no matter what circumstances we are in
He will continue the 3rd and 4th phases in the next two weeks.
For I am already being poured out like a drink offering and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award me on that day - and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
This is the 1st part of a 3 part sermon.
Begins with saying that a life-long vision grow through major phases in one's life.How we face the challenges of each phase determines when and if you fulfil the vision. These phases are:
1) Salvation Phase ( the most visionary thing you can do)
- this is where we begin and understand that our sins are forgiven
- this is where we hope for the future and the promise of eternal life
- now is when we live out Christ' life
- we start building up on God's word and claim his promises
- we live in the light of his return
- we start to win others to Christ
2) Discipleship phase ( Let His Word diret our steps_
- find mentors --> not physically, but through books, godly leaders by watching and learning from their actions and behaviour
- we discover our gifts and passion
- we start building character ( pure motives and integrity) so that we can:
a) have victory over temptation
b) grow through hurts
c) be faithful in the small things
d) do not side track
e) choose to glorify God no matter what circumstances we are in
He will continue the 3rd and 4th phases in the next two weeks.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
REFLECTIONS ON 2009
Wow! In a twinkling of an eye, 2009 is almost over! How time flies! Although there were days that i wished it would end.....at other times I puzzled at where all the time went......
Since it is the long weekend ( Hari Raya Weekend) , I thought I would take some time to reflect on 2009 and begin to start praying for the direction of 2010.
All in all, I must say that 2009 has been a terribly tough year - battling with depression, loneliness, failures and disappointments. The loneliness seemed to snowballed this year, culminating with many bouts of depression. To add to that, the disappointments with friends, church and cell group just did not make it any better. The very people I needed to turn to in those times just vanished away and didn't even show their care. Maybe I demand to0 much....too much of people and their time..... but the words just kept playing in my mind - People don't care how much you know till they know how much you care..... How true! And for that reason, I just decided to stop going for cell group.....defiant - maybe? But I just could not face people who only cared about themselves and no one else..... I just couldn't.....what is the point of discussing all the Bible verses and not ever putting it to use?!? Hypocrisy if you asked me!
Failures - well, in terms of exams, I have had to take my MRCP part 1 like 3 times before clearing it! But God is faithful - and he enabled me to pass my part 2A at the 1st attempt. I know how bad it would have been for me if I ended up like my friends who had to take part 2A multiple times as well...... so, on one part I had failures, I also had successes....God is good...and He remembers how hard I struggled to study and pass the exams.....
Yet, 2009 isn't all gloom and doom....In it all, I learnt TRUST...and yes, it is TRUST spelt in capital words......in every situation, TRUST just seemed to shine at me......and in the darkest times, that is when God is biggest and strongest and brightest..... it is in those times that He made me recollect all His goodness and blessings....How I prayed at the beginning of 2009 for favour with colleagues and bosses - and that I do have! I prayed for health - and that too He has granted me! So instead of focussing on what I do not have, I can now focus on what He has given me....and to continue hoping and looking forward to what He will give me in the future......
And that is why 2009 is a Year of TRUST - aptly put by Pastor Freddy in church last evening! Indeed , God you know my heart!
So, what is the meditation of my heart for 2010? I want it to be a Year of Joy!!! Why? Because there has been too much tears and disappointments in my life. I want JOY in every circumstance and situation...no matter how bad or difficult it will be....I want His JOY...His unending JOY....His overflowing JOY....for too long I have been wallowing in self pity....it is time to stand up and declare and proclaim JOY into my life....I don't know how it will come into my life and what form it will take.....But I want HIS JOY!!!
So I looked up verses on JOY and this is what I found:
1 Kings 1: 40 - And all the people went up after him, plating flutes and REJOICING greatly, so that the ground shook with the sound.
1 Chronicles 12:40 - There were plentiful supplies of flour, fig cakes, raisin cakes, wine , oil, cattle and sheep, for there was JOY in Israel.
1 Chronicles 15:16 - David told the leaders of the Levites to appoint their brothers as singers to sing JOYFUL songs, accompanied by musical instruments : lyres, harps and cymbals.
1 Chronicles 15:25 - So David and the elders of Israel and the commanders of units of a thousand went to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord from the house of Obed- Edom, with REJOICING.
1 Chronicles 16:33- Then the trees of the forest will sing, they will sing for JOY before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
1 Chronicles 29: 9 - The people REJOICED at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the Lord.
1 Chronicles 29:17 - I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things have I given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with JOY how willingly your people who are here have given to you.
2 Chronicles 20:27 - Then, led by Jehoshaphat, all the men of Judah and Jerusalem returned JOYFULLY to Jerusalem, for the Lord had given them cause to REJOICE over their enemies.
2 Chronicles 30: 26 - There was great JOY in Jerusalem, for since the days of Solomon son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem.
Ezra 3: 11,12 - With praise and THANKSGIVING they sang to the Lord: ' He is good, his love to Israel endures forever.' And all the people gave a great shout of PRAISE to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for JOY.
Ezra 6:16 - Then the peoples of Israel - the priests, the Levites and the rest of the exiles - celebrated the dedication of the house of God with JOY.
Ezra 6:22 - For seven days they celebrated with JOY the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because the Lord had filled them with JOY by changing the attitude of the king of Assyria, so that he assisted them in the work on the house of God ,the God of Israel.
Nehemiah 8:10 - Nehemiah said: 'Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared, This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the JOY of the Lord is your strength.'
Nehemiah 12:43 - And on that day they offered great sacrifices, REJOICING because God had given them GREAT JOY. The women and children also REJOICED. The sound of REJOICING in Jerusalem could be heard far away.
Esther 8:16 - For the Jews, it was a time of HAPPINESS and JOY, GLADNESS and honor.
Esther 8:17 - In every province and in every city, wherever the edict of the king went, there was JOY and GLADNESS among the Jews, with feasting and celebrating.
Job 8:21 - He will yet fill your mouth with LAUGHTER and your lips with shouts of JOY
Job 33:26 - He prays to God and finds favour with him, he sees God's face and shouts for JOY; he is restored by God to his righteous state.
Psalm 5:11 - But let all who take refuge in you be GLAD; let hem ever sing for JOY. Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may REJOICE in you.
Psalm 16:11- You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with JOY in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
Psalm 21:1 - O Lord, the king REJOICES in your strength, How great is his JOY in the victories you give!
Psalm 21:6 - Surely you have granted him eternal blessings and made him GLAD with the JOY of your presence.
Psalm 27:6 - Then my head will be exalted above above the enemies who surround me; at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of JOY; I will sing and make music to the Lord.
Psalm 30:5 - For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but REJOICING comes in the morning.
Psalm 32:11 - REJOICE in the Lord and be GLAD, you righteous; sing all your who are upright in heart!
Psalm 35:27 - May those who delight in my vindication shout for JOY and GLADNESS; may they always say, 'The Lord be exalted, who delights in the well - being of his servant.'
Psalm 42:4 - These things I remember as I pour out my soul; how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of JOY and THANKSGIVING among the festive throng
Psalm 43:4 - Then I wil go the altar of God, to God, my JOY and my DELIGHT. I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
Psalm 48:2 - It is beautiful in its loftiness, the JOY of the whole earth.
Psalm 51:8 - Let me hear JOY and GLADNESS; let the bones you have crushed REJOICE.
Psalm 51:12 - Restore to me the JOY of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit; to sustain me.
Psalm 67:4 - May the nations be GLAD and sing for JOY, for you rule the peoples justly, and guide the nations of the earth.
Psalm 71:23 - My lips will shout for JOY when I sing praise to you - I, whom you have redeemed.
Psalm 126:5 - Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of JOY.
Psalm 126:6 - He who goes out weeping carrying seeds to sow, will return with songs of JOY, carrying sheaves with him.
Proverbs 14:10 - Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its JOY.
Proverbs 15:23 - A man finds JOY in giving an apt reply - and how good is a timely word!
Ecclesiastes 9:7 - Go, eat your food with GLADNESS and drink your wine with a JOYFUL heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.
Isaiah 9:3 - You have enlarged the nation and increased their JOY; they REJOICE before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men REJOICE when dividing the plunder.
Isaiah 29:19 - Once more the humble will REJOICE in the Lord; the needy will REJOICE in the Holy One of Israel.
Isaiah 35:10 - They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting JOY will crown their heads. GLADNESS and JOY will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Isaiah 51:3 - The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. JOY and GLADNESS will be found in her,THANKSGIVING and the sound of singing.
Isaiah 51:11 - The ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting JOY will crown their heads. GLADNESS and JOY will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Isaiah 55:12 - You will go out with JOY and be lead forth in peace; the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you and all the trees will clap their hands.
Isaiah 60:15 - Although you have been forsaken and hated, with no one travelling through, I will make you the everlasting pride and the JOY of all generations.
Isaiah 61:3 - And provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty, instead of ashes, the oil of GLADNESS, instead of mourning and a garment of PRAISE, instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
Isaiah 61:7 - Instead of their shame my people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace they will REJOICE in their inheritance; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting JOY will be theirs.
Jeremiah 15:16 - When your words came, I ate them; they were my JOY and my heart's DELIGHT, for I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty
Jeremiah 31:13 - The maidens will dance and be GLAD, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into GLADNESS I will give them comfort and JOY instead of sorrow.
Habakkuk 3:18 - yet I will REJOICE in the Lord, I will be JOYFUL in God my Saviour.
Zephaniah 3:17 - The Lord you God is with you, he is might to save. He will take great DELIGHT in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will REJOICE over you with singing.
Wow! And those are just from the Old Testament only!!
Since it is the long weekend ( Hari Raya Weekend) , I thought I would take some time to reflect on 2009 and begin to start praying for the direction of 2010.
All in all, I must say that 2009 has been a terribly tough year - battling with depression, loneliness, failures and disappointments. The loneliness seemed to snowballed this year, culminating with many bouts of depression. To add to that, the disappointments with friends, church and cell group just did not make it any better. The very people I needed to turn to in those times just vanished away and didn't even show their care. Maybe I demand to0 much....too much of people and their time..... but the words just kept playing in my mind - People don't care how much you know till they know how much you care..... How true! And for that reason, I just decided to stop going for cell group.....defiant - maybe? But I just could not face people who only cared about themselves and no one else..... I just couldn't.....what is the point of discussing all the Bible verses and not ever putting it to use?!? Hypocrisy if you asked me!
Failures - well, in terms of exams, I have had to take my MRCP part 1 like 3 times before clearing it! But God is faithful - and he enabled me to pass my part 2A at the 1st attempt. I know how bad it would have been for me if I ended up like my friends who had to take part 2A multiple times as well...... so, on one part I had failures, I also had successes....God is good...and He remembers how hard I struggled to study and pass the exams.....
Yet, 2009 isn't all gloom and doom....In it all, I learnt TRUST...and yes, it is TRUST spelt in capital words......in every situation, TRUST just seemed to shine at me......and in the darkest times, that is when God is biggest and strongest and brightest..... it is in those times that He made me recollect all His goodness and blessings....How I prayed at the beginning of 2009 for favour with colleagues and bosses - and that I do have! I prayed for health - and that too He has granted me! So instead of focussing on what I do not have, I can now focus on what He has given me....and to continue hoping and looking forward to what He will give me in the future......
And that is why 2009 is a Year of TRUST - aptly put by Pastor Freddy in church last evening! Indeed , God you know my heart!
So, what is the meditation of my heart for 2010? I want it to be a Year of Joy!!! Why? Because there has been too much tears and disappointments in my life. I want JOY in every circumstance and situation...no matter how bad or difficult it will be....I want His JOY...His unending JOY....His overflowing JOY....for too long I have been wallowing in self pity....it is time to stand up and declare and proclaim JOY into my life....I don't know how it will come into my life and what form it will take.....But I want HIS JOY!!!
So I looked up verses on JOY and this is what I found:
1 Kings 1: 40 - And all the people went up after him, plating flutes and REJOICING greatly, so that the ground shook with the sound.
1 Chronicles 12:40 - There were plentiful supplies of flour, fig cakes, raisin cakes, wine , oil, cattle and sheep, for there was JOY in Israel.
1 Chronicles 15:16 - David told the leaders of the Levites to appoint their brothers as singers to sing JOYFUL songs, accompanied by musical instruments : lyres, harps and cymbals.
1 Chronicles 15:25 - So David and the elders of Israel and the commanders of units of a thousand went to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord from the house of Obed- Edom, with REJOICING.
1 Chronicles 16:33- Then the trees of the forest will sing, they will sing for JOY before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
1 Chronicles 29: 9 - The people REJOICED at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the Lord.
1 Chronicles 29:17 - I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things have I given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with JOY how willingly your people who are here have given to you.
2 Chronicles 20:27 - Then, led by Jehoshaphat, all the men of Judah and Jerusalem returned JOYFULLY to Jerusalem, for the Lord had given them cause to REJOICE over their enemies.
2 Chronicles 30: 26 - There was great JOY in Jerusalem, for since the days of Solomon son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem.
Ezra 3: 11,12 - With praise and THANKSGIVING they sang to the Lord: ' He is good, his love to Israel endures forever.' And all the people gave a great shout of PRAISE to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for JOY.
Ezra 6:16 - Then the peoples of Israel - the priests, the Levites and the rest of the exiles - celebrated the dedication of the house of God with JOY.
Ezra 6:22 - For seven days they celebrated with JOY the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because the Lord had filled them with JOY by changing the attitude of the king of Assyria, so that he assisted them in the work on the house of God ,the God of Israel.
Nehemiah 8:10 - Nehemiah said: 'Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared, This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the JOY of the Lord is your strength.'
Nehemiah 12:43 - And on that day they offered great sacrifices, REJOICING because God had given them GREAT JOY. The women and children also REJOICED. The sound of REJOICING in Jerusalem could be heard far away.
Esther 8:16 - For the Jews, it was a time of HAPPINESS and JOY, GLADNESS and honor.
Esther 8:17 - In every province and in every city, wherever the edict of the king went, there was JOY and GLADNESS among the Jews, with feasting and celebrating.
Job 8:21 - He will yet fill your mouth with LAUGHTER and your lips with shouts of JOY
Job 33:26 - He prays to God and finds favour with him, he sees God's face and shouts for JOY; he is restored by God to his righteous state.
Psalm 5:11 - But let all who take refuge in you be GLAD; let hem ever sing for JOY. Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may REJOICE in you.
Psalm 16:11- You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with JOY in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
Psalm 21:1 - O Lord, the king REJOICES in your strength, How great is his JOY in the victories you give!
Psalm 21:6 - Surely you have granted him eternal blessings and made him GLAD with the JOY of your presence.
Psalm 27:6 - Then my head will be exalted above above the enemies who surround me; at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of JOY; I will sing and make music to the Lord.
Psalm 30:5 - For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but REJOICING comes in the morning.
Psalm 32:11 - REJOICE in the Lord and be GLAD, you righteous; sing all your who are upright in heart!
Psalm 35:27 - May those who delight in my vindication shout for JOY and GLADNESS; may they always say, 'The Lord be exalted, who delights in the well - being of his servant.'
Psalm 42:4 - These things I remember as I pour out my soul; how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of JOY and THANKSGIVING among the festive throng
Psalm 43:4 - Then I wil go the altar of God, to God, my JOY and my DELIGHT. I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
Psalm 48:2 - It is beautiful in its loftiness, the JOY of the whole earth.
Psalm 51:8 - Let me hear JOY and GLADNESS; let the bones you have crushed REJOICE.
Psalm 51:12 - Restore to me the JOY of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit; to sustain me.
Psalm 67:4 - May the nations be GLAD and sing for JOY, for you rule the peoples justly, and guide the nations of the earth.
Psalm 71:23 - My lips will shout for JOY when I sing praise to you - I, whom you have redeemed.
Psalm 126:5 - Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of JOY.
Psalm 126:6 - He who goes out weeping carrying seeds to sow, will return with songs of JOY, carrying sheaves with him.
Proverbs 14:10 - Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its JOY.
Proverbs 15:23 - A man finds JOY in giving an apt reply - and how good is a timely word!
Ecclesiastes 9:7 - Go, eat your food with GLADNESS and drink your wine with a JOYFUL heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.
Isaiah 9:3 - You have enlarged the nation and increased their JOY; they REJOICE before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men REJOICE when dividing the plunder.
Isaiah 29:19 - Once more the humble will REJOICE in the Lord; the needy will REJOICE in the Holy One of Israel.
Isaiah 35:10 - They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting JOY will crown their heads. GLADNESS and JOY will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Isaiah 51:3 - The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. JOY and GLADNESS will be found in her,THANKSGIVING and the sound of singing.
Isaiah 51:11 - The ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting JOY will crown their heads. GLADNESS and JOY will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Isaiah 55:12 - You will go out with JOY and be lead forth in peace; the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you and all the trees will clap their hands.
Isaiah 60:15 - Although you have been forsaken and hated, with no one travelling through, I will make you the everlasting pride and the JOY of all generations.
Isaiah 61:3 - And provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty, instead of ashes, the oil of GLADNESS, instead of mourning and a garment of PRAISE, instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
Isaiah 61:7 - Instead of their shame my people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace they will REJOICE in their inheritance; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting JOY will be theirs.
Jeremiah 15:16 - When your words came, I ate them; they were my JOY and my heart's DELIGHT, for I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty
Jeremiah 31:13 - The maidens will dance and be GLAD, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into GLADNESS I will give them comfort and JOY instead of sorrow.
Habakkuk 3:18 - yet I will REJOICE in the Lord, I will be JOYFUL in God my Saviour.
Zephaniah 3:17 - The Lord you God is with you, he is might to save. He will take great DELIGHT in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will REJOICE over you with singing.
Wow! And those are just from the Old Testament only!!
Friday, November 13, 2009
PSALM 19
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the end of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat.
The law of the Lord is PERFECT,
reviving the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are TRUSTWORTHY,
making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lod are RIGHT,
giving JOY to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are RADIANT,
giving LIGHT to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is PURE,
enduring FOREVER,
The ordinances of the Lord are SURE,
and altogether RIGHTEOUS.
They are more PRECIOUS than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are SWEETER than honey,
than honey from the comb.
By them your servant is warned;
in keeping them is great reward.
Who can discern his errors?
FORGIVE MY HIDDEN FAULTS.
KEEP YOUR SERVANT ALSO FROM WILLFULL SINS;
MAY THEY NOT RULE OVER ME.Then will I be blameless,
innocent of great transgression.
MAY THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH AND THE MEDITATION OF MY HEART
BE PLEASING IN YOUR SIGHT,
O LORD, MY ROCK AND MY REDEEMER.
Amen! what a heartfelt prayer from the heart of King David! May I too desire that which he desired and prayed for!
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the end of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat.
The law of the Lord is PERFECT,
reviving the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are TRUSTWORTHY,
making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lod are RIGHT,
giving JOY to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are RADIANT,
giving LIGHT to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is PURE,
enduring FOREVER,
The ordinances of the Lord are SURE,
and altogether RIGHTEOUS.
They are more PRECIOUS than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are SWEETER than honey,
than honey from the comb.
By them your servant is warned;
in keeping them is great reward.
Who can discern his errors?
FORGIVE MY HIDDEN FAULTS.
KEEP YOUR SERVANT ALSO FROM WILLFULL SINS;
MAY THEY NOT RULE OVER ME.Then will I be blameless,
innocent of great transgression.
MAY THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH AND THE MEDITATION OF MY HEART
BE PLEASING IN YOUR SIGHT,
O LORD, MY ROCK AND MY REDEEMER.
Amen! what a heartfelt prayer from the heart of King David! May I too desire that which he desired and prayed for!
Friday, September 11, 2009
Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul....
Been reading my daily devotional material by Selwyn Hughes (EDWJ) entitled 'Being Real in the Psalms' and was truly truly glad for its contents.....which kinda summarised my life....and all the thoughts and emotions which I have been battling with (at least over the last few years)...... God truly knows what I need in each season and time of my life......
He starts off explaining about the 'uncomfortable' psalms- the psalms that acts as a mirror to our soul....which expresses the full range of human emotions - fear, anger, disappointment, hurt.......feelings that we are often ignorant or or willfully reluctant to face........the feelings that Christians are apt to ignore or repress....just because they are negative....and that they often question God or challenges His place in our lives......
And what is the purpose of these'uncomfortable' psalms??? The psalms that are a 'jarring outpourings in which the psalmists captures the struggle of the heart as it attempts to make sense of the goodness of God in the midst of the troubles of life......and he concludes that the purpose of these psalms are - to invite us to admit whatever we feel, know we are not alone in those feelings and to work through our uncomfortable emotions to a deeper relationship with God...... how these psalms not only teach us to praise and worship, they also teach us how to wrestle with negative feelings until those negative feelings give way to hope....
Then he goes on to expose one by one these negative feelings...beginning with fear......etc etc...and lays open the real reason for these negative feelings.....that reveals inner 'dis-ease'....the suspicion that God is not good.........Oh how true this is!!! And how many times have I struggled with this thought!!!!
Fear says , 'Is God capable of taking care of me?'
Anger says, 'Why does God allow my goals to be blocked?'
Envy says, ' God seems to bless other people more than me.'
Disappointment says, 'Is God fair?'
He says that our feelings may surface in the horizontal context of life- as a result of circumstances, events, situations - but they have a vertical context also: our concept of God.......How true!!!
Quoting Walter Brueggemann - 'The laments are refusals to settle for the way things are; they are acts of relentless hope that believes no situation falls outside of Yahweh's capacity for transformation; no situation falls outside of Yahweh's responsibility,.... It might surprise some to discover that in the darkness of our emotional wrestling with God, we grow in our understanding of Him....but only if we want to grow.....and this lesson, I have indeed learnt the hard way.......tough times, but so valuable in the growth of our souls.......
And then he goes on to talk about righteous vs unrighteous anger........and gives pointers to deal with unrighteous anger (anger that is self centred)...
1) When angry, be still and STOP
2) Next, WAIT
3) DO NOT FRET
And this is based on the scripture in Psalm 37: 1-40 'Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret..'
Then he goes on again to talk about fear and all its permutations...the solution? Focus on God..... Fear of God (being in awe of God) strips away all other fears and compels us to deal with a God who has everything under His control..... Fear clarifies where it is that we place our trust.......
'Fear knocked at the door, faith opened it and lo, there was no one there' .......
If the greatest threats and the things we fear most are matters over which we have no control, how important it is to develop a relationship with the One who is never out of control.... Indeed, this advice is definitely a solid rock to hold on to in times of turbulent times....
After that, he goes on to expose envy. Envy (he says) is malicious grudging- wanting to gain what we do not have. It is born of the deep love of self....and then he quotes Dr. W.E Sangster who wrote - 'To practise comparison with one's fellows is often to be trapped into sin. If we are not as virtuous as they are, we are tempted to imply it is only in appearance and they are possibly hypocrites; if they have tasted more of the sweetness of success than we have done, we often slide into envy.'....This is followed by quoting Psalm 73 as an example....our negative emotion indicate far more than that we are experiencing mental turmoil; they reveal how strongly sin reigns in our hearts......and then he continues to take apart Psalm 73 to analyze how Asaph responded.... how his perspective was changed after being in the presence of God.... and the key to a changed perspective always lie in our understanding......
Then, he goes on to talk about despair...which is defined as : the loss of hope, the refusal to struggle, a deadening of the heart to the idea that one will be helped or rescued..... characteristics of despair includes:
1) A desire NOT to struggle
2) The FLIGHT from desiure
- over the years, he has met many people who were going through life , attending to their daily duties in a mechanical way (sounds like me!), but inside they were dead. They had put to death all desire. To desire, such people say to themselves, mean to be hurt, so they argue that if they don't desire they won't have to endure the pain of disappointed longings.
- however, you CAN know God so intimately that though your desires on a human level are not met and you feel disappointed and hurt, you can live with that hurt without the loss of your soul.
3) Loneliness
- definition of loneliness: Isolation from those who mean so much to us
- Can Christ succour us in loneliness and save us from despair? HE CAN
- No one need be lonely, however separate from others he or she may be, if the lonely moments are used to get closer to God
Steps to dealing with despair:
1) Be willing to acknowledge our feelings
2) Talk to God about it
3) Understand and accept the fact that we live in a sinful world where not all our expectations wil be met, not all relationships succeed and not all hopes are realised
God will not allow His children to live life without desires because it will make them less than human. So He will constantly prod us and challenge us, sometimes by arousing our deepest passion.
- Lord, is that what you are doing with me? To stir my soul?
Indeed I agree with Selwyn....better to be mad than to feel nothing.....
Then he finally touches on shame...which is based on a flawed sense of self...
Lord, teach me to acknowledge my true feelings before you...not to wallow in self pity....but to steep myself in your presence to the point that it changes my perception of those negative feelings.....may those tough times be a time of drawing nearer to you and to throw myself in your arms, knowing that you will NEVER let go of me..... and may you restore that HOPE...... that I so desperately need.....
He starts off explaining about the 'uncomfortable' psalms- the psalms that acts as a mirror to our soul....which expresses the full range of human emotions - fear, anger, disappointment, hurt.......feelings that we are often ignorant or or willfully reluctant to face........the feelings that Christians are apt to ignore or repress....just because they are negative....and that they often question God or challenges His place in our lives......
And what is the purpose of these'uncomfortable' psalms??? The psalms that are a 'jarring outpourings in which the psalmists captures the struggle of the heart as it attempts to make sense of the goodness of God in the midst of the troubles of life......and he concludes that the purpose of these psalms are - to invite us to admit whatever we feel, know we are not alone in those feelings and to work through our uncomfortable emotions to a deeper relationship with God...... how these psalms not only teach us to praise and worship, they also teach us how to wrestle with negative feelings until those negative feelings give way to hope....
Then he goes on to expose one by one these negative feelings...beginning with fear......etc etc...and lays open the real reason for these negative feelings.....that reveals inner 'dis-ease'....the suspicion that God is not good.........Oh how true this is!!! And how many times have I struggled with this thought!!!!
Fear says , 'Is God capable of taking care of me?'
Anger says, 'Why does God allow my goals to be blocked?'
Envy says, ' God seems to bless other people more than me.'
Disappointment says, 'Is God fair?'
He says that our feelings may surface in the horizontal context of life- as a result of circumstances, events, situations - but they have a vertical context also: our concept of God.......How true!!!
Quoting Walter Brueggemann - 'The laments are refusals to settle for the way things are; they are acts of relentless hope that believes no situation falls outside of Yahweh's capacity for transformation; no situation falls outside of Yahweh's responsibility,.... It might surprise some to discover that in the darkness of our emotional wrestling with God, we grow in our understanding of Him....but only if we want to grow.....and this lesson, I have indeed learnt the hard way.......tough times, but so valuable in the growth of our souls.......
And then he goes on to talk about righteous vs unrighteous anger........and gives pointers to deal with unrighteous anger (anger that is self centred)...
1) When angry, be still and STOP
2) Next, WAIT
3) DO NOT FRET
And this is based on the scripture in Psalm 37: 1-40 'Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret..'
Then he goes on again to talk about fear and all its permutations...the solution? Focus on God..... Fear of God (being in awe of God) strips away all other fears and compels us to deal with a God who has everything under His control..... Fear clarifies where it is that we place our trust.......
'Fear knocked at the door, faith opened it and lo, there was no one there' .......
If the greatest threats and the things we fear most are matters over which we have no control, how important it is to develop a relationship with the One who is never out of control.... Indeed, this advice is definitely a solid rock to hold on to in times of turbulent times....
After that, he goes on to expose envy. Envy (he says) is malicious grudging- wanting to gain what we do not have. It is born of the deep love of self....and then he quotes Dr. W.E Sangster who wrote - 'To practise comparison with one's fellows is often to be trapped into sin. If we are not as virtuous as they are, we are tempted to imply it is only in appearance and they are possibly hypocrites; if they have tasted more of the sweetness of success than we have done, we often slide into envy.'....This is followed by quoting Psalm 73 as an example....our negative emotion indicate far more than that we are experiencing mental turmoil; they reveal how strongly sin reigns in our hearts......and then he continues to take apart Psalm 73 to analyze how Asaph responded.... how his perspective was changed after being in the presence of God.... and the key to a changed perspective always lie in our understanding......
Then, he goes on to talk about despair...which is defined as : the loss of hope, the refusal to struggle, a deadening of the heart to the idea that one will be helped or rescued..... characteristics of despair includes:
1) A desire NOT to struggle
2) The FLIGHT from desiure
- over the years, he has met many people who were going through life , attending to their daily duties in a mechanical way (sounds like me!), but inside they were dead. They had put to death all desire. To desire, such people say to themselves, mean to be hurt, so they argue that if they don't desire they won't have to endure the pain of disappointed longings.
- however, you CAN know God so intimately that though your desires on a human level are not met and you feel disappointed and hurt, you can live with that hurt without the loss of your soul.
3) Loneliness
- definition of loneliness: Isolation from those who mean so much to us
- Can Christ succour us in loneliness and save us from despair? HE CAN
- No one need be lonely, however separate from others he or she may be, if the lonely moments are used to get closer to God
Steps to dealing with despair:
1) Be willing to acknowledge our feelings
2) Talk to God about it
3) Understand and accept the fact that we live in a sinful world where not all our expectations wil be met, not all relationships succeed and not all hopes are realised
God will not allow His children to live life without desires because it will make them less than human. So He will constantly prod us and challenge us, sometimes by arousing our deepest passion.
- Lord, is that what you are doing with me? To stir my soul?
Indeed I agree with Selwyn....better to be mad than to feel nothing.....
Then he finally touches on shame...which is based on a flawed sense of self...
Lord, teach me to acknowledge my true feelings before you...not to wallow in self pity....but to steep myself in your presence to the point that it changes my perception of those negative feelings.....may those tough times be a time of drawing nearer to you and to throw myself in your arms, knowing that you will NEVER let go of me..... and may you restore that HOPE...... that I so desperately need.....
Friday, September 4, 2009
Random thoughts....
It's only been 2 days since I went back to work after a week long break.......immediately felt black clouds gathering around me.....a sense of dread .....feelings of depression starting to slowly seep in..... it took only 2 days...... sigh...
suddenly felt all kinds of emotions welling up..... fear... anger .... resentment....fatigue...... etc etc....why? I really have no idea....guess it was all those pent up frustrations over the last 3-4 years trying to escape.....
Really really feel like giving up.......really..... even my colleagues are feeling the same way...... it's tough......
I think Mum finally understood.....only in this last trip home....... we had a chat....which ultimately always ends up with the topic of dating/ finding a life partner......being very honest with her....I think she finally sensed my distress....even despair....and the loneliness that sometimes overwhlems......it was with this question: Have u ever considered going back to australia? tt made me realised how long it really took her to understand my predicament......my line of works exerts tremendous stress on me .... physically.... mentally... emotionally ..... even socially, my line of work has impoverished me by diminishing whatever little time and energy i have to socialise and develop meaningful friendships.......and really , its pretty sad when your own family members dun understand at all!!!
then again....who can I blame? I chose to take this path on my own.....stating that I think God called me to this ministry......but these days, i'm seriously beginning to doubt it........maybe i heard wrongly? maybe i was mistaken? .... I really dunno..... maybe, just maybe, its time to head in a different direction.......
suddenly felt all kinds of emotions welling up..... fear... anger .... resentment....fatigue...... etc etc....why? I really have no idea....guess it was all those pent up frustrations over the last 3-4 years trying to escape.....
Really really feel like giving up.......really..... even my colleagues are feeling the same way...... it's tough......
I think Mum finally understood.....only in this last trip home....... we had a chat....which ultimately always ends up with the topic of dating/ finding a life partner......being very honest with her....I think she finally sensed my distress....even despair....and the loneliness that sometimes overwhlems......it was with this question: Have u ever considered going back to australia? tt made me realised how long it really took her to understand my predicament......my line of works exerts tremendous stress on me .... physically.... mentally... emotionally ..... even socially, my line of work has impoverished me by diminishing whatever little time and energy i have to socialise and develop meaningful friendships.......and really , its pretty sad when your own family members dun understand at all!!!
then again....who can I blame? I chose to take this path on my own.....stating that I think God called me to this ministry......but these days, i'm seriously beginning to doubt it........maybe i heard wrongly? maybe i was mistaken? .... I really dunno..... maybe, just maybe, its time to head in a different direction.......
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Just a closer walk with Thee......
Been very relieved after making the decision NOT to take the MRCP Paces exam in October this year.....felt like a burden of 100 kg lifted off my shoulders!! Whew!! Felt so liberated.....felt so free to do what I needed to do....and desperately more than anything else, I needed to get back to God....to get a fresh perspective of my life.....to renew my vision and passion........I knew deep in my heart that I was drifting further and further away.....my heart growing colder and more callous each day....the disappointments I felt with the church in general ...... I needed a reminder of the grace and mercy of God in my life......
So one day, after finishing work early.....dropped by a christian bookshop looking for nothing, yet at the same time looking for something specific which would minister to my broken soul.......was so glad when I chanced upon Philip Yancey's book entitled - 'Soul Survivor' , How my faith survived the church....How apt! How appropriate for me at this moment!!!
True to its title....it did wonders for me.....and what was more amazing was how Philip Yancey discovered God and His grace through both Christian and non Christian writers.......and walking with the literary giants from the Hall of Fame did much for me....knowing that they suffered the anguish that I faced....knowing that the issues that I struggled with were not new and alien to the human race....and somehow grasping the insight that these pioneers of faith obtained through their own struggles...... the hypocrisy in the church, amongst Christians......the lies the church tells us......the fact that we all fall so far short of God's commands.....and in that, how the pride of life becomes not just a stumbling block but a sin.........and how each of them responded to these facts in life......some grew stronger in their faith....some crumbled under the sheer despair....... thought I would record some of Philip Yancey's words here as a reminder....
He starts off talking about the church abuse that he encountered in his christian walk. " I have no religious sanction. I am neither pastor nor teacher, but an ordinary pilgrim, one person among many on a spiritual search. Unavoidably and by instinct, I question and re-evaluate my faith all the time....I asked myself yet again,Why am I a still a Christian?' What keeps me pursuing a gospel that has come to me amid so much distortion and static, that often sounds more like bad news than good? "
This question resonated within my soul... Have been asking myself that question over and over again the last few months. And I did not have an answer to that question. Whilst I have stopped going for cell meetings, I still faithfully attend church on the weekend, not so much out of obligation or habit, but because it is one of my life line in maintaining my sanity....yet on the other hand, it is the people in the church that caused me to question my faith most of all.....they are the ones who make me feel that if all Christians are hypocrites, then I would rather not be one.........so how do i reconcile this seeming paradox???
Well, whilst this book did not resolve all my questions....it did achieve what Philip Yancey intended it for....It is a book that demonstrates people from the ages past who were people made fully alive...and credits their personal faith as the reason for that......let's look at some of them....
Martin Luther King Jr
- whilst I never could understand the racism between the white and blacks in America, the fact that this guy stood up for his generation....to stand in the gap....to preach a gospel of non violence...and of grace and mercy.....
- " 'Christianity,' he said, ' has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all its difficulties and agonising and tension-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us and redeems us to that more excellent was which only comes through suffering.' "
- When he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King referred yet again to the principles he learned from the Sermon on the Mount: " When the years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focussed on this marvellous age in which we live, men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilisation, because these humble children of God were willing to 'suffer for the righteousness' sake ".
- Made me re-consider my own life....of how 'racist' I am towards my fellow countrymen....the bumiputras of my land......how we grumble of how things are unfair and how the bumiputras get all the privilege and concession and not based on meritocracy......how we point the finger at others for being 'racist' when we ourselves are just as equally guilty of being exactly that!!! What hypocrisy! Lord, forgive me and help me to change my worldview!! Indeed, this is why the gospel says -Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Luke 6: 41-42)
- I know that you are asking today, 'How long will it take?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long , because truth pressed to earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justic.
How long? Not long, 'cause mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightningt of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpets that shall never call retreat. He is lifting up the hearts of man before His judgment seat. Oh, be swift , my souls, to answer him. Be jubilant, my feet. Our God is marching on.
(King , frm The New Yorker, 6 april 1987)
- I like what Yancey writes :
A prophet calls us to daily acts of obedience, regardless of personal cost, regardless of whether we feel successful or rewarded. And a prophet also reminds us that no failure, no suffering, no discouragement is final for the God who stands within the shadows, keeping watch above his own. A prophet who can convey both these messages with power just may change the world. While Martin Luther King Jr lived on earth, I, his neighbour, did not listen to what he said. I was quick to pounce on his flaws, and slow to recognise my own sin. But because he stayed faithful, in the short view by offering his body as a target but never as a weapon, and in the long view by holding before us his dream, a dream of a new kingdom of peace and justice and live, he becomes a prophet for me, the unlikeliest of followers.
GK Chesterton
- Yancey writes:
I learned not to laugh or smile, and not to cry. I tried not to care or react: to cold or heat, to good smells or bad ones, to beauty or ugliness, to love or hate. In a perveted experiment, I broke my own arm against the metal frame of my bunk bed to test my mastery of pain.
I see now what I could not see then, that I was erecting a strong stone fortress against love, for I thought myself unlovable......
- Sounds exactly like me!!... u mean I am not alone in feeling this way?!?
- Yancey found optimism in Chesterton's writings, esp in Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday, where Chesterton makes a case for optimism amidst the gloom of the world.... he also found that asking the question : ' Where does pleasure come from?' eventually led him back to God.... and that there are many good gifts - nature, music, romantic love, etc....which ultimately originates from our Creator...
- 'I am ordinary in the correct sense of the term. said Chesterton, 'which means the acceptance of an order; a Creator and the Creation, the common sense of gratitude for Creation, life and love as gifts permanently good, marriage and chivalry as laws rightly controlling them.'.......
- Yancey : Under his influence I too realised the need to become more 'ordinary'....
- 'The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult ; and left untried, ' he (Chesterton) said. The real question is not 'Why is Christianity so bad when it claims to be so good?' but rather 'Why are all human beings so bad when they claim to be so good?'... Chesterton readily admitted that the church had badly failed the gospel. In fact, he said , one of the strongest arguments in favour of Christianity is the failure of Christians, who thereby prove what the Bible teaches about the Fall and original sin.
- How true!!! In fact listen to what Chesterton writes when The Times asked a number of writers for essays on the topic, 'What's Wrong with the World?' :
Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely yours,
G.K Chesterton
- Would loved to have seen their responses to that line! But indeed, how true it is, isn't it?
Dr. Paul Brand
- does this guy even need any further introduction?!?
- Loved reading 2 of his books which was co-authored with Philip Yancey- The Gift of Pain and Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and In His Image.... He is one of my favourite and most celebrated Christian doctor that I know of.....
-"The most precious possesion any human being is his spirit - his will to live, his sense of dignity, his personality. Though technically we may be concerned with tendons, bones and nerve endings, we must never lose sight of the person we are treating."- Dr. Paul Brand
- As Brand reflects now, the process of following his patients through the full rehabilitation cycle ultimately challenged his whole approach towards medicine. Somewhere, perhaps in medical school, doctors acquire an attitude that seems suspiciously like hubris: 'Oh, you've come just in time. Count on me. I think I'll be able to save you......Brand began to see his chief contribution as one he had not studied in medical school: to join with his patient as a partner in the task of restoring dignity to a broken spirit. 'We are treating a person, not a disease,' he says. 'That is the true meaning of rehabilitation.'
- Like Yancey, I was beginning to see my problem....I was wrestling with issues facing humanity, yet I have not learned to love individuals....well, not in the manner that God requires of me....not in the way that glorifies Him....and His created beings.....and to make matters worst, I was in the healthcare profession where we are expected to 'care' and love people.....have I lost the vision along the way? Have I got so disllusioned and disappointed that I forgot why God called me to this particular profession?!?
- I love this quote of Dr. Brand's.....
' Because of where I practised medicine, I never made much money at it. But I tell you that as I look back over a lifetime of surgery, the host of friends who once were patients bring me more joy than wealth could ever bring. I first met them when they were suffering and afraid. As their doctor, I shared their pain. Now that I am old, it is their love and gratitude that illuminates the continuing pathway of my life. It's strange - those of us who involve ourselves in the places where there is the most suffering, look back in surprise to find that it was there that we discovered the reality of joy.'
Robert Coles
- this was a Christian psychiatrist who became famous after deciding to interview children from various background (Children of Crisis) and found that those from disadvantaged families to have greater inner strength that he has not seen in others....whilst those from privileged backgrounds were more bored, alienated.......and came to this : It was true that the poor were cursed......Yet in a strange but undeniable way, the poor were also blessed, for whatever reason, with qualities such as courage and love and a willing dependence on God. The irony: good humanists work all their lives to improve the condition of the disadvantaged, but for what? To raise them to the level of the upper classes so that they too can experience boredom, alienation and decadence?
- At the end of his research, he had discovered that the poor are mysteriously blessed and that the rich live in peril. He learned that what matters most comes not from without - the circumstances of life- but from within, inside the heart of an individual man or woman or child. He had begun his research with a head full of phrases such as 'guilt complex', 'character disorders' and 'response to stimuli'. He had emerged with old fashioned words like 'conscience' and 'sin' and 'free will'.
Tolstoy & Dostoevsky
- In his spiritual autobiography, A Confession, Leo Tolstoy mentions that Christians sometimes treat each other worse than they treat people of other faiths.....
- Yancey goes on to say ...." As I think about individual Christians I know, I see some people made incomparably better by their faith, and some made measurably worse. For every gracious, kind-spirited, forgiving Christian, I can point to a proud, mean-spirited, judgmental one. In my own experience, those who strive the hardest and believe the most fervently are sometimes the least attractive persons. Like the Pharisees of Jesus' day, they get caught up in competition and end up self-righteous rather than righteous. Politicians tell me their nastiest letters come from people who quote the Bible and claim to speak for God - which I easily believe since my mailbox shows the same pattern. How do I resolve the tension between the ideals of the Gospel and the actuality of those who profess it?"
- Indeed, how do we resolve that conflict? In fact, I think most of the time, I err on the 'legalistic' and Pharisaic side of the coin...... I judge others by their failures whilst forgetting the grace of God in my own life...... For Tolstoy, this apparent discrepancy finally tore him apart, whereas for Dostoevsky, he found the grace of God in his own failures.....he saw grace in the lives of his prison cell mates....in many of his novels- Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov..... he learned in prison that the gospel of grace infiltrates this world not primarily through words and rational arguments but through deeds, through love.....
- As Yancey aptly puts it : 'Today , I claim these two Russians as my spiritual guides because they help me accept a central paradox of the Christian life. From Tolstoy, I learn the need to look inside, to the kingdom of God that is within me. In that glance, I see how miserably I fall short of the high ideals of the gospel. But from Dostoevsky, I learn the full extent of grace. Not only the kingdom of God is within me; God himself dwells there. Where sin increased, grace increased all the more - is how Paul expressed it in Romans.'
Mahatma Gandhi
-Though Gandhi was not a Christian by belief or practice, he attempted to an impressive degree to live out some of Jesus' principles.........he modelled his principles on what Jesus taught.....love for your enemies.....non violence... he once said ; ' No cause, no matter how just, merited bloodshed. I would die for the cause, but there is no cause I am prepared to kill for. '
- Yance asked a very valid question as he read of Gandhi's life : 'When I read the history of Mahatma Gandhi alongside the history of the Christian church, I cannot help wondering what went wrong. Why did it take a Hindu to embrace the principles of reconciliation, humility and vicarious sacrifice so clearly modelled by Jesus himself? Gandhi credited Jesus as his source for these life principles, and he worked like a disciplined soldier to put them into practice. What has kept Christians from following Jesus with the same abandon? '
- Indeed, I ask myself, that very same question....What has kept ME from following Jesus with the same fervour and abandon???
- Sadly, it was the church itself that turned Gandhi away from Christ....the failure of man, caused this Hindu to reject Christ.....in Gandhi's words - 'The church did not make a favourable impression on me,' he remembers, citing dull sermons and a congregation who 'appeared rather to be worldly-minded, people going to church for recreation and in conformity to custom.'
- It's amazing....because I once remembered how I had those same exact thoughts....the only difference, I cling on to Christ even more tightly despite my experience in church....whilst Gandhi chose to walk away....How tragic!
Dr. C. Everett Koop
- I have never heard of this name before I read this book....and I did not know who he was, but after reading this excerpt, I found inspiration in this man- a paediatric surgeon who managed to reconcile the fact that a man of faith can get involved in politics without making crucial compromises........ He walked the difficult road of a public person with a Christian faith....and he spoke out for what he believed, no matter how unpopular it would make him.....and he emerged a winner.....the best Surgeon General America has ever had...a man of integrity.......How we need more people like him!!
John Donne
- Yancey found John Donne - the Elizabethan poet four centuries ago who wrote 'Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions'.......with the most appropriate 'message' which he used while speaking at a friend's funeral.....a man with AIDS .... who was also a Christian.....
- I on the other hand had experience of Donne (unknown to me at that time!) through a movie/ play that I watched at one of my oncological posting... 'Wit' which was written by Margaret Edson.......
- It was in this book that I discovered the life of John Donne... a dean who lived in the time of the plague in London...and who contracted the illness in his service to the people that he served......
- Yancey writes : ' The central reason I keep returning to Donne's Devotions , as on the night of David's funeral, is that the book recounts each crisis in detail (a crisis of fear, crisis of meaning and a crisis of death), and continues to yield new insights into these primal confrontations with the mystery of suffering.....Although Devotions does not answer the philosophical questions, it does record Donne's emotional resolution , a gradual movement towards peace. At first - confined to bed, churning out prayers without answers, comtemplating death, regurgitation guilt - he can find no relief from fear. Obsessed, he reviews every biblical occurence of the word 'fear'. As he does so, it dawns on him that life will always include circumstances that incite fear: if not ilness, financial hardship, if not poverty, rejection, if not loneliness, failure. In such a world, Donne had a choice: to fear God, or to fear everything else......Donne concludes his best course is to cultivate a proper fear of the Lord, which fear can supplant all others: 'as thou hast given me a repentance, not to be repented of, so give me , O Lord, a fear, of which I may not be afraid'. I learned from Donne, when faced with doubts, to review my alternatives. If for whatever reason I refuse to trust God, what, then, can I trust?'
- Donne suffered pain and illness....and questioned the meaning of it all.....he knew the crisis of fear...and the crisis of meaning....he struggled to accept death.....and emerged with a 'holy indifference' to death...not by discounting death's horrors, but by a renewed confidence in resurrection.....'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? ....... God knows all this world's weight and burden and heaviness, said Donne in a sermon; 'And if there were not a weight of future glory to counterpoise it, we should all sink into nothing.' ...
- I love this quote...which reverberated in my mind whilst watching 'Wit' - "Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so...One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die."
Annie Dillard
- yet another unsung and unknown hero......how the modern world has suffered for the lost of the love for reading.....the classics i mean..... I was introduced to Annie Dillard by Yancey.....and the 'rebellion' which she went through sounds very much like mine....
- Yancey writes: ' Annie did have one short fling of rebellion against God, she told me. After four consecutive summers at the church camp, she got fed up with the hypocrisy of people coming to church to show off their clothes and wanting to make a major statement, she decided to confront the ministers head-on. The senior minister terrified her, so she marched into the assistant minister's office and delivered her spiel about hypocrisy. A wise man, in one fell swoop he accomplished for her what took me many years: he separated the church from God, and did so in a dignified way, rather than demeaned, his teenage critic. 'He was an experienced, calm man in a three-piece suit; he had a moustache and wore glasses. I was this little high school kid who thought I was the only person in the world with complaints against the church. He heard me out and then said, " You are right, honey, there is a lot of hypocrisy," Annie felt her arguments dissolved. Then the minister proceeded to load her down with books by C.S. Lewis which, he suggested, she might find useful for a final-year essay....To Annie's consternation, he was right....After ploughing through four straight volumes of C.S.Lewis she fell right back in the arms of Christianity. Her rebellion lasted one month. '
- Hehe.....sounds like me....only difference was there was no such minister to counsel me......and I stumbled upon C.S.Lewis by accident....through a friend of mine.....
- I like her quote: ' I alternate between thinking of the planet as a home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.' ...pretty much sums up the description I have of this blog.....
There are many many more giants of faith out there...people like Frederick Buechner, Henri Nouwen, Shusaku Endo, etc ....there would not be enough pages to write about them....but I must say that I am totally awed by this book....and would like to read all their writings for my ownself......and to collect my own 'Hall of Fame' of literary Christian writers....giants of faith who stood in the gap for their generation......and impacting their world for Christ......
So one day, after finishing work early.....dropped by a christian bookshop looking for nothing, yet at the same time looking for something specific which would minister to my broken soul.......was so glad when I chanced upon Philip Yancey's book entitled - 'Soul Survivor' , How my faith survived the church....How apt! How appropriate for me at this moment!!!
True to its title....it did wonders for me.....and what was more amazing was how Philip Yancey discovered God and His grace through both Christian and non Christian writers.......and walking with the literary giants from the Hall of Fame did much for me....knowing that they suffered the anguish that I faced....knowing that the issues that I struggled with were not new and alien to the human race....and somehow grasping the insight that these pioneers of faith obtained through their own struggles...... the hypocrisy in the church, amongst Christians......the lies the church tells us......the fact that we all fall so far short of God's commands.....and in that, how the pride of life becomes not just a stumbling block but a sin.........and how each of them responded to these facts in life......some grew stronger in their faith....some crumbled under the sheer despair....... thought I would record some of Philip Yancey's words here as a reminder....
He starts off talking about the church abuse that he encountered in his christian walk. " I have no religious sanction. I am neither pastor nor teacher, but an ordinary pilgrim, one person among many on a spiritual search. Unavoidably and by instinct, I question and re-evaluate my faith all the time....I asked myself yet again,Why am I a still a Christian?' What keeps me pursuing a gospel that has come to me amid so much distortion and static, that often sounds more like bad news than good? "
This question resonated within my soul... Have been asking myself that question over and over again the last few months. And I did not have an answer to that question. Whilst I have stopped going for cell meetings, I still faithfully attend church on the weekend, not so much out of obligation or habit, but because it is one of my life line in maintaining my sanity....yet on the other hand, it is the people in the church that caused me to question my faith most of all.....they are the ones who make me feel that if all Christians are hypocrites, then I would rather not be one.........so how do i reconcile this seeming paradox???
Well, whilst this book did not resolve all my questions....it did achieve what Philip Yancey intended it for....It is a book that demonstrates people from the ages past who were people made fully alive...and credits their personal faith as the reason for that......let's look at some of them....
Martin Luther King Jr
- whilst I never could understand the racism between the white and blacks in America, the fact that this guy stood up for his generation....to stand in the gap....to preach a gospel of non violence...and of grace and mercy.....
- " 'Christianity,' he said, ' has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all its difficulties and agonising and tension-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us and redeems us to that more excellent was which only comes through suffering.' "
- When he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King referred yet again to the principles he learned from the Sermon on the Mount: " When the years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focussed on this marvellous age in which we live, men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilisation, because these humble children of God were willing to 'suffer for the righteousness' sake ".
- Made me re-consider my own life....of how 'racist' I am towards my fellow countrymen....the bumiputras of my land......how we grumble of how things are unfair and how the bumiputras get all the privilege and concession and not based on meritocracy......how we point the finger at others for being 'racist' when we ourselves are just as equally guilty of being exactly that!!! What hypocrisy! Lord, forgive me and help me to change my worldview!! Indeed, this is why the gospel says -Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Luke 6: 41-42)
- I know that you are asking today, 'How long will it take?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long , because truth pressed to earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justic.
How long? Not long, 'cause mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightningt of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpets that shall never call retreat. He is lifting up the hearts of man before His judgment seat. Oh, be swift , my souls, to answer him. Be jubilant, my feet. Our God is marching on.
(King , frm The New Yorker, 6 april 1987)
- I like what Yancey writes :
A prophet calls us to daily acts of obedience, regardless of personal cost, regardless of whether we feel successful or rewarded. And a prophet also reminds us that no failure, no suffering, no discouragement is final for the God who stands within the shadows, keeping watch above his own. A prophet who can convey both these messages with power just may change the world. While Martin Luther King Jr lived on earth, I, his neighbour, did not listen to what he said. I was quick to pounce on his flaws, and slow to recognise my own sin. But because he stayed faithful, in the short view by offering his body as a target but never as a weapon, and in the long view by holding before us his dream, a dream of a new kingdom of peace and justice and live, he becomes a prophet for me, the unlikeliest of followers.
GK Chesterton
- Yancey writes:
I learned not to laugh or smile, and not to cry. I tried not to care or react: to cold or heat, to good smells or bad ones, to beauty or ugliness, to love or hate. In a perveted experiment, I broke my own arm against the metal frame of my bunk bed to test my mastery of pain.
I see now what I could not see then, that I was erecting a strong stone fortress against love, for I thought myself unlovable......
- Sounds exactly like me!!... u mean I am not alone in feeling this way?!?
- Yancey found optimism in Chesterton's writings, esp in Orthodoxy and The Man Who Was Thursday, where Chesterton makes a case for optimism amidst the gloom of the world.... he also found that asking the question : ' Where does pleasure come from?' eventually led him back to God.... and that there are many good gifts - nature, music, romantic love, etc....which ultimately originates from our Creator...
- 'I am ordinary in the correct sense of the term. said Chesterton, 'which means the acceptance of an order; a Creator and the Creation, the common sense of gratitude for Creation, life and love as gifts permanently good, marriage and chivalry as laws rightly controlling them.'.......
- Yancey : Under his influence I too realised the need to become more 'ordinary'....
- 'The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult ; and left untried, ' he (Chesterton) said. The real question is not 'Why is Christianity so bad when it claims to be so good?' but rather 'Why are all human beings so bad when they claim to be so good?'... Chesterton readily admitted that the church had badly failed the gospel. In fact, he said , one of the strongest arguments in favour of Christianity is the failure of Christians, who thereby prove what the Bible teaches about the Fall and original sin.
- How true!!! In fact listen to what Chesterton writes when The Times asked a number of writers for essays on the topic, 'What's Wrong with the World?' :
Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely yours,
G.K Chesterton
- Would loved to have seen their responses to that line! But indeed, how true it is, isn't it?
Dr. Paul Brand
- does this guy even need any further introduction?!?
- Loved reading 2 of his books which was co-authored with Philip Yancey- The Gift of Pain and Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and In His Image.... He is one of my favourite and most celebrated Christian doctor that I know of.....
-"The most precious possesion any human being is his spirit - his will to live, his sense of dignity, his personality. Though technically we may be concerned with tendons, bones and nerve endings, we must never lose sight of the person we are treating."- Dr. Paul Brand
- As Brand reflects now, the process of following his patients through the full rehabilitation cycle ultimately challenged his whole approach towards medicine. Somewhere, perhaps in medical school, doctors acquire an attitude that seems suspiciously like hubris: 'Oh, you've come just in time. Count on me. I think I'll be able to save you......Brand began to see his chief contribution as one he had not studied in medical school: to join with his patient as a partner in the task of restoring dignity to a broken spirit. 'We are treating a person, not a disease,' he says. 'That is the true meaning of rehabilitation.'
- Like Yancey, I was beginning to see my problem....I was wrestling with issues facing humanity, yet I have not learned to love individuals....well, not in the manner that God requires of me....not in the way that glorifies Him....and His created beings.....and to make matters worst, I was in the healthcare profession where we are expected to 'care' and love people.....have I lost the vision along the way? Have I got so disllusioned and disappointed that I forgot why God called me to this particular profession?!?
- I love this quote of Dr. Brand's.....
' Because of where I practised medicine, I never made much money at it. But I tell you that as I look back over a lifetime of surgery, the host of friends who once were patients bring me more joy than wealth could ever bring. I first met them when they were suffering and afraid. As their doctor, I shared their pain. Now that I am old, it is their love and gratitude that illuminates the continuing pathway of my life. It's strange - those of us who involve ourselves in the places where there is the most suffering, look back in surprise to find that it was there that we discovered the reality of joy.'
Robert Coles
- this was a Christian psychiatrist who became famous after deciding to interview children from various background (Children of Crisis) and found that those from disadvantaged families to have greater inner strength that he has not seen in others....whilst those from privileged backgrounds were more bored, alienated.......and came to this : It was true that the poor were cursed......Yet in a strange but undeniable way, the poor were also blessed, for whatever reason, with qualities such as courage and love and a willing dependence on God. The irony: good humanists work all their lives to improve the condition of the disadvantaged, but for what? To raise them to the level of the upper classes so that they too can experience boredom, alienation and decadence?
- At the end of his research, he had discovered that the poor are mysteriously blessed and that the rich live in peril. He learned that what matters most comes not from without - the circumstances of life- but from within, inside the heart of an individual man or woman or child. He had begun his research with a head full of phrases such as 'guilt complex', 'character disorders' and 'response to stimuli'. He had emerged with old fashioned words like 'conscience' and 'sin' and 'free will'.
Tolstoy & Dostoevsky
- In his spiritual autobiography, A Confession, Leo Tolstoy mentions that Christians sometimes treat each other worse than they treat people of other faiths.....
- Yancey goes on to say ...." As I think about individual Christians I know, I see some people made incomparably better by their faith, and some made measurably worse. For every gracious, kind-spirited, forgiving Christian, I can point to a proud, mean-spirited, judgmental one. In my own experience, those who strive the hardest and believe the most fervently are sometimes the least attractive persons. Like the Pharisees of Jesus' day, they get caught up in competition and end up self-righteous rather than righteous. Politicians tell me their nastiest letters come from people who quote the Bible and claim to speak for God - which I easily believe since my mailbox shows the same pattern. How do I resolve the tension between the ideals of the Gospel and the actuality of those who profess it?"
- Indeed, how do we resolve that conflict? In fact, I think most of the time, I err on the 'legalistic' and Pharisaic side of the coin...... I judge others by their failures whilst forgetting the grace of God in my own life...... For Tolstoy, this apparent discrepancy finally tore him apart, whereas for Dostoevsky, he found the grace of God in his own failures.....he saw grace in the lives of his prison cell mates....in many of his novels- Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov..... he learned in prison that the gospel of grace infiltrates this world not primarily through words and rational arguments but through deeds, through love.....
- As Yancey aptly puts it : 'Today , I claim these two Russians as my spiritual guides because they help me accept a central paradox of the Christian life. From Tolstoy, I learn the need to look inside, to the kingdom of God that is within me. In that glance, I see how miserably I fall short of the high ideals of the gospel. But from Dostoevsky, I learn the full extent of grace. Not only the kingdom of God is within me; God himself dwells there. Where sin increased, grace increased all the more - is how Paul expressed it in Romans.'
Mahatma Gandhi
-Though Gandhi was not a Christian by belief or practice, he attempted to an impressive degree to live out some of Jesus' principles.........he modelled his principles on what Jesus taught.....love for your enemies.....non violence... he once said ; ' No cause, no matter how just, merited bloodshed. I would die for the cause, but there is no cause I am prepared to kill for. '
- Yance asked a very valid question as he read of Gandhi's life : 'When I read the history of Mahatma Gandhi alongside the history of the Christian church, I cannot help wondering what went wrong. Why did it take a Hindu to embrace the principles of reconciliation, humility and vicarious sacrifice so clearly modelled by Jesus himself? Gandhi credited Jesus as his source for these life principles, and he worked like a disciplined soldier to put them into practice. What has kept Christians from following Jesus with the same abandon? '
- Indeed, I ask myself, that very same question....What has kept ME from following Jesus with the same fervour and abandon???
- Sadly, it was the church itself that turned Gandhi away from Christ....the failure of man, caused this Hindu to reject Christ.....in Gandhi's words - 'The church did not make a favourable impression on me,' he remembers, citing dull sermons and a congregation who 'appeared rather to be worldly-minded, people going to church for recreation and in conformity to custom.'
- It's amazing....because I once remembered how I had those same exact thoughts....the only difference, I cling on to Christ even more tightly despite my experience in church....whilst Gandhi chose to walk away....How tragic!
Dr. C. Everett Koop
- I have never heard of this name before I read this book....and I did not know who he was, but after reading this excerpt, I found inspiration in this man- a paediatric surgeon who managed to reconcile the fact that a man of faith can get involved in politics without making crucial compromises........ He walked the difficult road of a public person with a Christian faith....and he spoke out for what he believed, no matter how unpopular it would make him.....and he emerged a winner.....the best Surgeon General America has ever had...a man of integrity.......How we need more people like him!!
John Donne
- Yancey found John Donne - the Elizabethan poet four centuries ago who wrote 'Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions'.......with the most appropriate 'message' which he used while speaking at a friend's funeral.....a man with AIDS .... who was also a Christian.....
- I on the other hand had experience of Donne (unknown to me at that time!) through a movie/ play that I watched at one of my oncological posting... 'Wit' which was written by Margaret Edson.......
- It was in this book that I discovered the life of John Donne... a dean who lived in the time of the plague in London...and who contracted the illness in his service to the people that he served......
- Yancey writes : ' The central reason I keep returning to Donne's Devotions , as on the night of David's funeral, is that the book recounts each crisis in detail (a crisis of fear, crisis of meaning and a crisis of death), and continues to yield new insights into these primal confrontations with the mystery of suffering.....Although Devotions does not answer the philosophical questions, it does record Donne's emotional resolution , a gradual movement towards peace. At first - confined to bed, churning out prayers without answers, comtemplating death, regurgitation guilt - he can find no relief from fear. Obsessed, he reviews every biblical occurence of the word 'fear'. As he does so, it dawns on him that life will always include circumstances that incite fear: if not ilness, financial hardship, if not poverty, rejection, if not loneliness, failure. In such a world, Donne had a choice: to fear God, or to fear everything else......Donne concludes his best course is to cultivate a proper fear of the Lord, which fear can supplant all others: 'as thou hast given me a repentance, not to be repented of, so give me , O Lord, a fear, of which I may not be afraid'. I learned from Donne, when faced with doubts, to review my alternatives. If for whatever reason I refuse to trust God, what, then, can I trust?'
- Donne suffered pain and illness....and questioned the meaning of it all.....he knew the crisis of fear...and the crisis of meaning....he struggled to accept death.....and emerged with a 'holy indifference' to death...not by discounting death's horrors, but by a renewed confidence in resurrection.....'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? ....... God knows all this world's weight and burden and heaviness, said Donne in a sermon; 'And if there were not a weight of future glory to counterpoise it, we should all sink into nothing.' ...
- I love this quote...which reverberated in my mind whilst watching 'Wit' - "Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so...One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die."
Annie Dillard
- yet another unsung and unknown hero......how the modern world has suffered for the lost of the love for reading.....the classics i mean..... I was introduced to Annie Dillard by Yancey.....and the 'rebellion' which she went through sounds very much like mine....
- Yancey writes: ' Annie did have one short fling of rebellion against God, she told me. After four consecutive summers at the church camp, she got fed up with the hypocrisy of people coming to church to show off their clothes and wanting to make a major statement, she decided to confront the ministers head-on. The senior minister terrified her, so she marched into the assistant minister's office and delivered her spiel about hypocrisy. A wise man, in one fell swoop he accomplished for her what took me many years: he separated the church from God, and did so in a dignified way, rather than demeaned, his teenage critic. 'He was an experienced, calm man in a three-piece suit; he had a moustache and wore glasses. I was this little high school kid who thought I was the only person in the world with complaints against the church. He heard me out and then said, " You are right, honey, there is a lot of hypocrisy," Annie felt her arguments dissolved. Then the minister proceeded to load her down with books by C.S. Lewis which, he suggested, she might find useful for a final-year essay....To Annie's consternation, he was right....After ploughing through four straight volumes of C.S.Lewis she fell right back in the arms of Christianity. Her rebellion lasted one month. '
- Hehe.....sounds like me....only difference was there was no such minister to counsel me......and I stumbled upon C.S.Lewis by accident....through a friend of mine.....
- I like her quote: ' I alternate between thinking of the planet as a home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.' ...pretty much sums up the description I have of this blog.....
There are many many more giants of faith out there...people like Frederick Buechner, Henri Nouwen, Shusaku Endo, etc ....there would not be enough pages to write about them....but I must say that I am totally awed by this book....and would like to read all their writings for my ownself......and to collect my own 'Hall of Fame' of literary Christian writers....giants of faith who stood in the gap for their generation......and impacting their world for Christ......
Saturday, July 11, 2009
A caring church....
Again...have been so deeply impressed by the simple, yet utterly profound insight of Selwyn Hughes on the whole theme of caring and how the church should care that I really must write his thoughts down before I forget in time to come....
In the EDWJ issue of Jan/Feb 2009:
Five ingredients that go into making a community of God's people a model of His love and care:
1) A caring church is excited about the challenge of bringing it's member into maturity
- problems among Christians are God's way of highlighting the need for maturity
- difficulties in a local church should be seen not as an obstacle but as an opportunity
- A problem, after all, is only 'a solution in disguise'
- Is your local church or fellowship plagued by problems?
- Perhaps you need this word today to remind you that there is no growth without pain
- When we take personal responsibility for the upholding of Christ and the development of fellow Christians in our local congregation, we fulfil our responsibility as part of the Body of Christ, our Saviour
2) A caring church is a church whose leaders demonstrate care and concern for each other, thus setting a good example to the flock
- It is the responsibility of leaders in any church to maintain a high standard of holiness for no church can rise higher than its leadership in the quality of its fellowship and caring
- Care is demonstrated by church members spending time together, not just in business meetings but also in relationship-building
3) In a caring church people can share their deep feelings and hurts without fear of rejection
- How difficult this truth can be in real life!!
- In Selwyn Hughes words - " Well, if you have a mist in the pulpit, you are certain to get a fog in the pew! Such preaching have turned a lot of christians into phoneys,"
- If we care for people, we will give them the freedom to tell us how they feel, with no fear of being rejected
4) A caring church is a church with a system of loving support
- Love isn't about sentiment or feeling - its about giving real help to real people
- Problems are anticipated, strategies planned and lasting solutions developed
5) A caring church is a church whose members are willing to lay down their lives for others
- Direct quote from that morning's devotion:
In all my travels I have come across only one church where a commitment is made by every member to place the interests of the other members before their own.I found this church in Pusan, Korea. The atmosphere in that church was the most wonderful experience in over 40 years of ministry. The minister told me that whenever someone joins this church, either through conversion or moving into the community from elsewhere, all the other members gather round the new member and recite together these words:
'We covenant to love you with the love of the Lord Jesus Christ - the love that puts your interests as a priority. Nothing you do will stop us loving you. If your actions dishonour Christ, we will tell you so, but in a spirit of love. We will pray for you daily by name. Anything we have is at your disposal. We will honestly tell you how we feel about the level of your spiritual maturity from time to time. If this means pain for each of us, we will trust our relationship enough to take that risk, realising that in 'speaking the truth in love we grow up in every way into Christ who is the head'. We are committed to you because of what od has designed us to be be in His loving creation.'
- Wow!!! what a commitment!!
In the EDWJ issue of Jan/Feb 2009:
Five ingredients that go into making a community of God's people a model of His love and care:
1) A caring church is excited about the challenge of bringing it's member into maturity
- problems among Christians are God's way of highlighting the need for maturity
- difficulties in a local church should be seen not as an obstacle but as an opportunity
- A problem, after all, is only 'a solution in disguise'
- Is your local church or fellowship plagued by problems?
- Perhaps you need this word today to remind you that there is no growth without pain
- When we take personal responsibility for the upholding of Christ and the development of fellow Christians in our local congregation, we fulfil our responsibility as part of the Body of Christ, our Saviour
2) A caring church is a church whose leaders demonstrate care and concern for each other, thus setting a good example to the flock
- It is the responsibility of leaders in any church to maintain a high standard of holiness for no church can rise higher than its leadership in the quality of its fellowship and caring
- Care is demonstrated by church members spending time together, not just in business meetings but also in relationship-building
3) In a caring church people can share their deep feelings and hurts without fear of rejection
- How difficult this truth can be in real life!!
- In Selwyn Hughes words - " Well, if you have a mist in the pulpit, you are certain to get a fog in the pew! Such preaching have turned a lot of christians into phoneys,"
- If we care for people, we will give them the freedom to tell us how they feel, with no fear of being rejected
4) A caring church is a church with a system of loving support
- Love isn't about sentiment or feeling - its about giving real help to real people
- Problems are anticipated, strategies planned and lasting solutions developed
5) A caring church is a church whose members are willing to lay down their lives for others
- Direct quote from that morning's devotion:
In all my travels I have come across only one church where a commitment is made by every member to place the interests of the other members before their own.I found this church in Pusan, Korea. The atmosphere in that church was the most wonderful experience in over 40 years of ministry. The minister told me that whenever someone joins this church, either through conversion or moving into the community from elsewhere, all the other members gather round the new member and recite together these words:
'We covenant to love you with the love of the Lord Jesus Christ - the love that puts your interests as a priority. Nothing you do will stop us loving you. If your actions dishonour Christ, we will tell you so, but in a spirit of love. We will pray for you daily by name. Anything we have is at your disposal. We will honestly tell you how we feel about the level of your spiritual maturity from time to time. If this means pain for each of us, we will trust our relationship enough to take that risk, realising that in 'speaking the truth in love we grow up in every way into Christ who is the head'. We are committed to you because of what od has designed us to be be in His loving creation.'
- Wow!!! what a commitment!!
Saturday, June 27, 2009
The Art of Caring
Every now and then, I am reminded why I love reading the writings of Selwyn Hughes...He is one of the few of the earliest minister who's writing impacted me in my early days as a Christian....especially in the area of the 'caring' ministry.....His insight have proved valuable....and accurate....wished I had known some of these 'pearls' before I embarked on my own caring ministry.....maybe I would have less scars to show for it......
The last issue of EDWJ (Feb 2009) has an excellent issue on how to care - for others and ourselves....I loved the section on pitfalls to avoid.....
1) We need to learn first of all how to be 'LOVE RECEIVERS' - 1 John 4: 7 - 21
I struggled with this issue for the longest of time...because partly, it is easier to give than to receive...because a lot of times, we feel that receiving means that we are the 'weaker' party.....How wrong we can be! However, for me, the biggest struggle was that I hate 'troubling' others with my problems...never knowing if people were willing to listen.....or even stand with me in those times...... I hated to be obligated to others.....But now , I am learning slowly to accept help....to be more thick-skinned in sharing with others....and asking for help....
2) We must never manipulate others - Mark 10: 17-31
Sometimes we forget and then manipulate others into doing what we think they should be doing......
3) We must curb our curiosity - Hebrews 3: 1- 15
This is when we need to draw a line between helping versus our own curiosity about other people's problems ( ie the Gossip Queen within us!)
4) We must avoid caring where care is not needed - 2 Tim 1: 3-14
5) Care for one at a time (disciplined desire) - Proverbs 2:1-10
We need to be aware of our capacity to care...usually that means one person at a time....
6) We need to avoid caring for others to the detriment of our own families - 1 tim 5:1-8
Used to make this mistake...until the Lord showed me that my role in my family is greater, if not equal to my role in church.....and that over the years He has shown me that my role in caring my unbelieving family members probably supercedes the strangers I can help out in the community....
7) We need to learn when to let go - Acts 8; 26-40
How true!!!!
8) We must always make sure that when we care we have spiritual support and back-up - Acts 12: 1-17
How often we forget this! This is of utmost importance for people in the caring ministry......isn't it?!?
Lord, teach me to be a 'CARER' like you did.....one who knew how to minister to others....and to care for ourselves at the same time.......
The last issue of EDWJ (Feb 2009) has an excellent issue on how to care - for others and ourselves....I loved the section on pitfalls to avoid.....
1) We need to learn first of all how to be 'LOVE RECEIVERS' - 1 John 4: 7 - 21
I struggled with this issue for the longest of time...because partly, it is easier to give than to receive...because a lot of times, we feel that receiving means that we are the 'weaker' party.....How wrong we can be! However, for me, the biggest struggle was that I hate 'troubling' others with my problems...never knowing if people were willing to listen.....or even stand with me in those times...... I hated to be obligated to others.....But now , I am learning slowly to accept help....to be more thick-skinned in sharing with others....and asking for help....
2) We must never manipulate others - Mark 10: 17-31
Sometimes we forget and then manipulate others into doing what we think they should be doing......
3) We must curb our curiosity - Hebrews 3: 1- 15
This is when we need to draw a line between helping versus our own curiosity about other people's problems ( ie the Gossip Queen within us!)
4) We must avoid caring where care is not needed - 2 Tim 1: 3-14
5) Care for one at a time (disciplined desire) - Proverbs 2:1-10
We need to be aware of our capacity to care...usually that means one person at a time....
6) We need to avoid caring for others to the detriment of our own families - 1 tim 5:1-8
Used to make this mistake...until the Lord showed me that my role in my family is greater, if not equal to my role in church.....and that over the years He has shown me that my role in caring my unbelieving family members probably supercedes the strangers I can help out in the community....
7) We need to learn when to let go - Acts 8; 26-40
How true!!!!
8) We must always make sure that when we care we have spiritual support and back-up - Acts 12: 1-17
How often we forget this! This is of utmost importance for people in the caring ministry......isn't it?!?
Lord, teach me to be a 'CARER' like you did.....one who knew how to minister to others....and to care for ourselves at the same time.......
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Reminded of His LOVE, reassured of His faithfulness....
Was really really glad that I was able to leave work early on a sunday night (after my night shift on saturday!) and actually be able to make it for church on a sunday morning!!! It's been a while since I have been able to get to church/ even cell group....so it was good to be back in the house of God again , after what seems like a loong time!!!
The speaker today was Ps Sam Farina (who was also my church retreat main speaker this year)....and was very very blessed by his sermon......really needed the reminders that he talked about today...how when the tough times come, our vision gets blurry....yet in the midst of it all we need to remember:
1) He sees us even if we can't see Him..
How true!!! Liked what he said that when we cry, our vision gets blurred...and we can't see clearly...yet, even when we can't see or sense Him, He is always there.....like it says in the Bible - He cares even for a sparrow......How much more valuable are we?!???
2) Believing is seeing...
3) He responds to our obedience
This is like direct contrast to what the world says.....isn't it?!?
Liked the examples he named.....like Moses asked by God to remove his sandals at the burning bush ( and the fact that he was probably surrounded by sheep dung at that time).....or when Naaman was asked to wash at the river....... or the blind man whom Jesus asked what he wanted ( to be healed of his blindness)....
4) He wants to heal our pain, not assign blame....
How true! But how often we forget this, that we always ask who is to blame....Like the when Jesus' disciples asked him about the blind man and who sinned ( him or his parents) causing his blindness.....I love Jesus' reply.... No one sinned, this happened so that the glory of God may be revealed through him....WOW!!! Deep answer loaded with heaps of meaning!!!
At that moment.....my heart was touched....I needed a desperate reminder that God loves me.....and that He wants to reveal His glory and power in my weakness......was also reflecting the fact that God is using my hands to heal people.....lots of time, I questioned whether doing medicine was the right thing for me....I feel ill-equipped mentally, physically and emotionally....din feel that I was doing much for others....however, it was only today that I actually received affirmation that my care for patients and their survival is only possible through His grace...........also realised that my singlehood can also be a way He can reveal His power and glory...I dunno how....I dunno why....but I believe that He cares...and He knows the desires of my heart...and that if I believe and walk with Him, I will see that miracle in my life!!!
The speaker today was Ps Sam Farina (who was also my church retreat main speaker this year)....and was very very blessed by his sermon......really needed the reminders that he talked about today...how when the tough times come, our vision gets blurry....yet in the midst of it all we need to remember:
1) He sees us even if we can't see Him..
How true!!! Liked what he said that when we cry, our vision gets blurred...and we can't see clearly...yet, even when we can't see or sense Him, He is always there.....like it says in the Bible - He cares even for a sparrow......How much more valuable are we?!???
2) Believing is seeing...
3) He responds to our obedience
This is like direct contrast to what the world says.....isn't it?!?
Liked the examples he named.....like Moses asked by God to remove his sandals at the burning bush ( and the fact that he was probably surrounded by sheep dung at that time).....or when Naaman was asked to wash at the river....... or the blind man whom Jesus asked what he wanted ( to be healed of his blindness)....
4) He wants to heal our pain, not assign blame....
How true! But how often we forget this, that we always ask who is to blame....Like the when Jesus' disciples asked him about the blind man and who sinned ( him or his parents) causing his blindness.....I love Jesus' reply.... No one sinned, this happened so that the glory of God may be revealed through him....WOW!!! Deep answer loaded with heaps of meaning!!!
At that moment.....my heart was touched....I needed a desperate reminder that God loves me.....and that He wants to reveal His glory and power in my weakness......was also reflecting the fact that God is using my hands to heal people.....lots of time, I questioned whether doing medicine was the right thing for me....I feel ill-equipped mentally, physically and emotionally....din feel that I was doing much for others....however, it was only today that I actually received affirmation that my care for patients and their survival is only possible through His grace...........also realised that my singlehood can also be a way He can reveal His power and glory...I dunno how....I dunno why....but I believe that He cares...and He knows the desires of my heart...and that if I believe and walk with Him, I will see that miracle in my life!!!
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Roller coaster ride....
As usual.....time passes as one gets entrenched in a flurry of activities...
from having to do an extended cardio posting ( no thanks to the H1N1 outbreak).....to changing work place in the middle of the month and having to adjust to hour-long examinations of every new patient....to the lack of efficiency and competence in some 'nurses' (if you could even call them that!).....to missing my nephew's birth....to even simple things like having to endure a 40 min ride to work every day.....it has indeed been a roller-coaster ride of events and emotions.....Not to mention the wedding I had to attend recently....
Have been contemplating this issue called 'love'.....or what is more commonly known as 'romantic love'.....could never understand how a man and a woman can 'love' each other so much to want to spend all their time with each other...much less get married and have kids....yes, I am cynical......but yet at the same time, it is a beautiful and amazing miracle that I have yet to understand.....
Guess, in a way, I will never understand it.....probably explains that fact of why I am still single at this age...tsk, tsk ......I see the heads out there shaking in dismay at my predicament...puzzled as to the fact why I as a woman would not want to be in 'love'....to get married...to have kids...
Don't get me wrong....I would love to fall in love, be swept off my feet, receive flowers and surprises....I would want to get married and have kids.....but I think one also has to be realistic.....that we live in an imperfect world....with fellow human beings who have also fallen from grace.......that we need to be careful as to who we give our hearts and life to....
For me...I can only pray that God will bring the correct person into my life....and that I would recognize him and that we would have the opportunity to develop a beautiful friendship...which could lead to something more.....
For now....I can only sit back and enjoy the roller coaster ride whilst it lasts.....and hopefully not end up to dizzy or nauseous at the end of it.......
from having to do an extended cardio posting ( no thanks to the H1N1 outbreak).....to changing work place in the middle of the month and having to adjust to hour-long examinations of every new patient....to the lack of efficiency and competence in some 'nurses' (if you could even call them that!).....to missing my nephew's birth....to even simple things like having to endure a 40 min ride to work every day.....it has indeed been a roller-coaster ride of events and emotions.....Not to mention the wedding I had to attend recently....
Have been contemplating this issue called 'love'.....or what is more commonly known as 'romantic love'.....could never understand how a man and a woman can 'love' each other so much to want to spend all their time with each other...much less get married and have kids....yes, I am cynical......but yet at the same time, it is a beautiful and amazing miracle that I have yet to understand.....
Guess, in a way, I will never understand it.....probably explains that fact of why I am still single at this age...tsk, tsk ......I see the heads out there shaking in dismay at my predicament...puzzled as to the fact why I as a woman would not want to be in 'love'....to get married...to have kids...
Don't get me wrong....I would love to fall in love, be swept off my feet, receive flowers and surprises....I would want to get married and have kids.....but I think one also has to be realistic.....that we live in an imperfect world....with fellow human beings who have also fallen from grace.......that we need to be careful as to who we give our hearts and life to....
For me...I can only pray that God will bring the correct person into my life....and that I would recognize him and that we would have the opportunity to develop a beautiful friendship...which could lead to something more.....
For now....I can only sit back and enjoy the roller coaster ride whilst it lasts.....and hopefully not end up to dizzy or nauseous at the end of it.......
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Laughable human desires....
Whew!! It's been yet another few months of gruelling mixture of work and exams...hours of busy days at work....plus exam stress....sleep deprivation....and angsty exhanges with ppl at the place i now nicknamed 'The Cesspool'..... unfortunately because of the current 'orange' alert due to the swine flu....am unable to get out of this place on time.....yet on the other hand, fortunately i will be covering another part of this terribly busy department that I currently work in.......
It's been yet another roller coaster ride for me....at least mentally....and more importantly, emotionally....whilst I see others around me moving on to the next stage in life ( ie colleagues going out on dates, friends getting hitched...others getting married.....my own sibling having her 1st child).....made me wonder over and over again the same old questions that used to haunt me (and still do).....why am I stuck in this 'twilight' zone and somehow stuck in 2nd gear all the time? When will I finally meet the 'man of my dreams'...get married....have kids......will it ever happen??? I begin to question God.....and start to doubt His goodness and plans for my life.....i begin to scrutinise myself and put myself down......
Why? Why do I always do this to myself?!?
I dunno....I guess I am just human......
On the other hand, it seems so laughable that one can be so preoccupied with this thought and end up in a downward spiral because of it........kinda brought things to a halt after today's sermon ......pastor has aptly run a series on revelations ....which seems so relevant in view of what's happening in the world - the economy, the swine flu, etc etc....... in view of the possible plagues coming, my problems seems so small and insignificant.....laughable to say the least.....
But what truly struck a chord in me today was this verse - 'I will repay you what the locusts has taken' - joel 2: 25....wow!! most people wouldn't even know where this verse is found much lest quote it ad verbatim......but for me, it is more than a familiar passage from the old testament.....it is a promise.....a promise given to me 7 years ago ....promising me the salvation of not just my nuclear family, but for my whole extended family (and for those who know, it amounts to many many people!!)......Indeed, God is good....and He NEVER forgets his promises to us......He is always faithful to bring His promises to us to pass...albeit in His ways and in His timing........
So I guess....for now, I can leave this issue safely in His hands....and walk away with a chuckle in my heart....knowing that He knows the desires of my heart.....and He will give me an answer in His time......and all I need to do is wait.....and know that He is good....and faithful......
It's been yet another roller coaster ride for me....at least mentally....and more importantly, emotionally....whilst I see others around me moving on to the next stage in life ( ie colleagues going out on dates, friends getting hitched...others getting married.....my own sibling having her 1st child).....made me wonder over and over again the same old questions that used to haunt me (and still do).....why am I stuck in this 'twilight' zone and somehow stuck in 2nd gear all the time? When will I finally meet the 'man of my dreams'...get married....have kids......will it ever happen??? I begin to question God.....and start to doubt His goodness and plans for my life.....i begin to scrutinise myself and put myself down......
Why? Why do I always do this to myself?!?
I dunno....I guess I am just human......
On the other hand, it seems so laughable that one can be so preoccupied with this thought and end up in a downward spiral because of it........kinda brought things to a halt after today's sermon ......pastor has aptly run a series on revelations ....which seems so relevant in view of what's happening in the world - the economy, the swine flu, etc etc....... in view of the possible plagues coming, my problems seems so small and insignificant.....laughable to say the least.....
But what truly struck a chord in me today was this verse - 'I will repay you what the locusts has taken' - joel 2: 25....wow!! most people wouldn't even know where this verse is found much lest quote it ad verbatim......but for me, it is more than a familiar passage from the old testament.....it is a promise.....a promise given to me 7 years ago ....promising me the salvation of not just my nuclear family, but for my whole extended family (and for those who know, it amounts to many many people!!)......Indeed, God is good....and He NEVER forgets his promises to us......He is always faithful to bring His promises to us to pass...albeit in His ways and in His timing........
So I guess....for now, I can leave this issue safely in His hands....and walk away with a chuckle in my heart....knowing that He knows the desires of my heart.....and He will give me an answer in His time......and all I need to do is wait.....and know that He is good....and faithful......
Saturday, April 4, 2009
interesting read....
Dug this out from my email account amidst the scores of junkmail I receive from friends....found this a gem worth keeping.....
FINDING AND KEEPING A LIFE PARTNER
by Dov Heller, M.A.
When it comes to making the decision about choosing a life partner, no
one wants to make a mistake. Yet, with a divorce rate of close to 50%,
it appears that many are making serious mistakes in their approach to
finding Mr./Miss. Right!
If you ask most couples who are engaged why they're getting married,
they'll say: 'We're in love'; I believe this is the ..1 mistake people
make when they date. Choosing a life partner should never be based on
love. Though this may sound 'not politically correct', there's a
profound truth here.
Love is not the basis for getting married. Rather, love is the result of
a good marriage. When the other ingredients are right, then the love
will come. Let me say it again: 'You can't build a lifetime relationship
on love alone'; You need a lot more!!!
Here are five questions you must ask yourself if you're serious about
finding and keeping a life partner.
QUESTION ..1: Do we share a common life purpose?
Why is this so important? Let me put it this way: If you're married for
20 or 30 years, that's a long time to live with someone. What do you
plan to do with each other all that time? Travel, eat and jog together?
You need to share something deeper and more meaningful. You need a
common life purpose.
Two things can happen in a marriage: (1) You can grow together, or
(2)you can grow apart. 50% of the people out there are growing apart.
To make a marriage work, you need to know what you want out of life!
Bottom line; marry someone who wants the same thing.
QUESTION ..2: Do I feel safe expressing my feelings and thoughts with this person?
This question goes to the core of the quality of your relationship.
Feeling safe means you can communicate openly with this person. The
basis of having good communication is trust â€' i.e. trust that I won't
get 'punished'; or hurt for expressing my honest thoughts and feelings.
A colleague of mine defines an abusive person as someone with whom you
feel afraid to express your thoughts and feelings. Be honest with
yourself on this one. Make sure you feel emotionally safe with the
person you plan to marry.
QUESTION ..3: Is he/she a mensch?
A mensch is someone who is a refined and sensitive person. How can you
test? Here are some suggestions. Do they work on personal growth on a
regular basis? Are they serious about improving themselves? A teacher of
mine defines a good person as 'someone who is always striving to be good
and do the right ';. So ask about your significant other: What do they
do with their time? Is this person materialistic? Usually a
materialistic person is not someone whose top priority is character
refinement.
There are essentially two types of people in the world: (1) People who
are dedicated to personal growth and (2) people who are dedicated to
seeking comfort. Someone whose goal in life is to be comfortable will
put personal comfort ahead of doing the right thing. You need to know
that before walking down the aisle.
QUESTION ..4: How does he/she treat other people?
The one most important thing that makes any relationship work is the
ability to give. By giving, we mean the ability to give another person
pleasure.
Ask: Is this someone who enjoys giving pleasure to others or are they
wrapped up in themselves and selfâ€' absorbed?
To measure this, think about the following: How do they treat people
whom they do not have to be nice to, such as waiters, bus boys, taxi
drivers, etc.. How do they treat their parents and siblings? Do they
have gratitude and appreciation?
If they don't have gratitude for the people who have given them
everything; can you do nearly as much for them? You can be sure that
someone, who treats others poorly, will eventually treat you poorly as
well.
QUESTION ..5: Is there anything I'm hoping to change about this person after we're married?
Too many people make the mistake of marrying someone with the intention
of trying to 'improve'; them after they're married. As a colleague of
mine puts it: 'You can probably expect someone to change after marriage
for the worse' If you cannot fully accept this person the way they are
now, then you are not ready to marry them.
In conclusion, dating doesn't have to be difficult and treacherous.
The key is to try leading a little more with your head and less with
your heart. It pays to be as objective as possible when you are dating;
to be sure to ask questions that will help you get to the key issues.
Falling in love is a great feeling, but when you wake up with a ring on
your finger, you don't want to find yourself trouble because you didn't
do your homework.
Another perspective...
There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a
distance.. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you let go of or at
least minimize your time with draining, negative, incompatible,
notâ€'going anywhere relationships. Observe the relationships around you.
Pay attention...
Which ones lift and which ones lean?
Which ones encourage and which ones discourage?
Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going
downhill?
When you leave certain people do you feel better or feel worse?
Which ones dont appreciate you?
Which ones make you feel good, praises you, boosts you with loving and caring words or annotations.
The more you seek quality, respect, growth, peace of mind, love and
truth around you...the easier it will become for you to decide who gets
to sit in the front row and who should be moved to the balcony of your
life.
An African proverb states, 'Before you get married, keep both eyes open,
and after you marry, close one eye'; Before you get involved and make a
commitment to someone, don't let lust, desperation, immaturity,
ignorance, pressure from others or a low selfâ€'esteem make you blind to
warning signs. Keep your eyes open, and don't fool yourself that you can
change someone or that what you see as faults aren't really that
important.
Do you bring out the best in each other?
Do you compliment and compromise with each other, or do you compete,
compare and control?
What do you bring to the relationship?
Do you bring past relationships, past hurt, past mistrust, past pain?
You can't take someone to the altar to alter them. You can't make someone love you or make someone stay.
If you develop self esteem, spiritual discernment, and 'a life'; you
won't find yourself making someone else responsible for your happiness
or responsible for your pain. Seeking status, sex, and security are the
wrong reasons to be in a relationship.
WHAT KEEPS A RELATIONSHIP STRONG IS:
1. TRUST
2. COMMUNICATION
3. INTIMACY
4. A SENSE OF HUMOR
5. SHARING TASKS
6. DAILY EXCHANGES (meal, shared activity, hug, call, touch, notes,
etc.)
7. SHARING COMMON GOALS AND INTERESTS
8. GIVING EACH OTHER SPACE TO GROW WITHOUT FEELING INSECURE
9.GIVING EACH OTHER A SENSE OF BELONGING AND ASSURANCES OF COMMITMENT
10. CONCERN AND CARE FOR YOUR LOVER IN YOUR OWN WAYS.
If these qualities are missing, the relationship will erode as resentment withdrawal, abuse, neglect, and dishonesty; and pain will
replace.
Wished more people would understand this...unfortunately most of my answers to the first few questions are in the negative....guess that kinda sums up my life right now.....and maybe being single at this point is just the right thing for me.....
FINDING AND KEEPING A LIFE PARTNER
by Dov Heller, M.A.
When it comes to making the decision about choosing a life partner, no
one wants to make a mistake. Yet, with a divorce rate of close to 50%,
it appears that many are making serious mistakes in their approach to
finding Mr./Miss. Right!
If you ask most couples who are engaged why they're getting married,
they'll say: 'We're in love'; I believe this is the ..1 mistake people
make when they date. Choosing a life partner should never be based on
love. Though this may sound 'not politically correct', there's a
profound truth here.
Love is not the basis for getting married. Rather, love is the result of
a good marriage. When the other ingredients are right, then the love
will come. Let me say it again: 'You can't build a lifetime relationship
on love alone'; You need a lot more!!!
Here are five questions you must ask yourself if you're serious about
finding and keeping a life partner.
QUESTION ..1: Do we share a common life purpose?
Why is this so important? Let me put it this way: If you're married for
20 or 30 years, that's a long time to live with someone. What do you
plan to do with each other all that time? Travel, eat and jog together?
You need to share something deeper and more meaningful. You need a
common life purpose.
Two things can happen in a marriage: (1) You can grow together, or
(2)you can grow apart. 50% of the people out there are growing apart.
To make a marriage work, you need to know what you want out of life!
Bottom line; marry someone who wants the same thing.
QUESTION ..2: Do I feel safe expressing my feelings and thoughts with this person?
This question goes to the core of the quality of your relationship.
Feeling safe means you can communicate openly with this person. The
basis of having good communication is trust â€' i.e. trust that I won't
get 'punished'; or hurt for expressing my honest thoughts and feelings.
A colleague of mine defines an abusive person as someone with whom you
feel afraid to express your thoughts and feelings. Be honest with
yourself on this one. Make sure you feel emotionally safe with the
person you plan to marry.
QUESTION ..3: Is he/she a mensch?
A mensch is someone who is a refined and sensitive person. How can you
test? Here are some suggestions. Do they work on personal growth on a
regular basis? Are they serious about improving themselves? A teacher of
mine defines a good person as 'someone who is always striving to be good
and do the right ';. So ask about your significant other: What do they
do with their time? Is this person materialistic? Usually a
materialistic person is not someone whose top priority is character
refinement.
There are essentially two types of people in the world: (1) People who
are dedicated to personal growth and (2) people who are dedicated to
seeking comfort. Someone whose goal in life is to be comfortable will
put personal comfort ahead of doing the right thing. You need to know
that before walking down the aisle.
QUESTION ..4: How does he/she treat other people?
The one most important thing that makes any relationship work is the
ability to give. By giving, we mean the ability to give another person
pleasure.
Ask: Is this someone who enjoys giving pleasure to others or are they
wrapped up in themselves and selfâ€' absorbed?
To measure this, think about the following: How do they treat people
whom they do not have to be nice to, such as waiters, bus boys, taxi
drivers, etc.. How do they treat their parents and siblings? Do they
have gratitude and appreciation?
If they don't have gratitude for the people who have given them
everything; can you do nearly as much for them? You can be sure that
someone, who treats others poorly, will eventually treat you poorly as
well.
QUESTION ..5: Is there anything I'm hoping to change about this person after we're married?
Too many people make the mistake of marrying someone with the intention
of trying to 'improve'; them after they're married. As a colleague of
mine puts it: 'You can probably expect someone to change after marriage
for the worse' If you cannot fully accept this person the way they are
now, then you are not ready to marry them.
In conclusion, dating doesn't have to be difficult and treacherous.
The key is to try leading a little more with your head and less with
your heart. It pays to be as objective as possible when you are dating;
to be sure to ask questions that will help you get to the key issues.
Falling in love is a great feeling, but when you wake up with a ring on
your finger, you don't want to find yourself trouble because you didn't
do your homework.
Another perspective...
There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a
distance.. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you let go of or at
least minimize your time with draining, negative, incompatible,
notâ€'going anywhere relationships. Observe the relationships around you.
Pay attention...
Which ones lift and which ones lean?
Which ones encourage and which ones discourage?
Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going
downhill?
When you leave certain people do you feel better or feel worse?
Which ones dont appreciate you?
Which ones make you feel good, praises you, boosts you with loving and caring words or annotations.
The more you seek quality, respect, growth, peace of mind, love and
truth around you...the easier it will become for you to decide who gets
to sit in the front row and who should be moved to the balcony of your
life.
An African proverb states, 'Before you get married, keep both eyes open,
and after you marry, close one eye'; Before you get involved and make a
commitment to someone, don't let lust, desperation, immaturity,
ignorance, pressure from others or a low selfâ€'esteem make you blind to
warning signs. Keep your eyes open, and don't fool yourself that you can
change someone or that what you see as faults aren't really that
important.
Do you bring out the best in each other?
Do you compliment and compromise with each other, or do you compete,
compare and control?
What do you bring to the relationship?
Do you bring past relationships, past hurt, past mistrust, past pain?
You can't take someone to the altar to alter them. You can't make someone love you or make someone stay.
If you develop self esteem, spiritual discernment, and 'a life'; you
won't find yourself making someone else responsible for your happiness
or responsible for your pain. Seeking status, sex, and security are the
wrong reasons to be in a relationship.
WHAT KEEPS A RELATIONSHIP STRONG IS:
1. TRUST
2. COMMUNICATION
3. INTIMACY
4. A SENSE OF HUMOR
5. SHARING TASKS
6. DAILY EXCHANGES (meal, shared activity, hug, call, touch, notes,
etc.)
7. SHARING COMMON GOALS AND INTERESTS
8. GIVING EACH OTHER SPACE TO GROW WITHOUT FEELING INSECURE
9.GIVING EACH OTHER A SENSE OF BELONGING AND ASSURANCES OF COMMITMENT
10. CONCERN AND CARE FOR YOUR LOVER IN YOUR OWN WAYS.
If these qualities are missing, the relationship will erode as resentment withdrawal, abuse, neglect, and dishonesty; and pain will
replace.
Wished more people would understand this...unfortunately most of my answers to the first few questions are in the negative....guess that kinda sums up my life right now.....and maybe being single at this point is just the right thing for me.....
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Give thanks, with a grateful heart.....
Been more and more acutely aware of hwo ungrateful I have been....complaining about work every single day.....and to top it off, resenting everything that went/ is wrong in my life.....
The message by Ps David Lim on saturday was what I needed to hear.....a good dose of fear and awe after reading the passage from Revelations 8 - 11.....i guess when u read abt the end times, every difficult circumstances seem pale in comparison.....right?
So....thought I would come of a list of things to be grateful for....
1) I have a job...that pays for the bills...
2) I have a place to live... now...and also the provision of a new home (downstairs!!)...
3) I have a wonderful family - mum and dad and siblings...
4) I know Jesus and am assured of my position in Christ...
5) I have the word of God with me...
6) I have nice colleagues and seniors (well, most of the time lar)
7) I am healthy and can walk....
8) I have friends....
Oklar....need to think abt this a bit more....
GTG now..
The message by Ps David Lim on saturday was what I needed to hear.....a good dose of fear and awe after reading the passage from Revelations 8 - 11.....i guess when u read abt the end times, every difficult circumstances seem pale in comparison.....right?
So....thought I would come of a list of things to be grateful for....
1) I have a job...that pays for the bills...
2) I have a place to live... now...and also the provision of a new home (downstairs!!)...
3) I have a wonderful family - mum and dad and siblings...
4) I know Jesus and am assured of my position in Christ...
5) I have the word of God with me...
6) I have nice colleagues and seniors (well, most of the time lar)
7) I am healthy and can walk....
8) I have friends....
Oklar....need to think abt this a bit more....
GTG now..
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Moving house yet again....
can't believe this is happening again!! ARGGHHHH!!!!
for the dunno how many times now have to look for a new home!!
No thanks to my unethical landlady/ housing agent who decided to sell my current home.......sigh......here starts the whole process again of looking, viewing, packing and finally physically moving!!! hate this!!!!
Anyway , Lord I trust that You will provide not just a lovely, convenient and cheap property, but also one that stays permanent and won't be sold enbloc, etc etc.....
The life of a Singapore tenant!!!!
for the dunno how many times now have to look for a new home!!
No thanks to my unethical landlady/ housing agent who decided to sell my current home.......sigh......here starts the whole process again of looking, viewing, packing and finally physically moving!!! hate this!!!!
Anyway , Lord I trust that You will provide not just a lovely, convenient and cheap property, but also one that stays permanent and won't be sold enbloc, etc etc.....
The life of a Singapore tenant!!!!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
of SVTs and AVRTs...
sigh...Dad was admitted again to hospital for palpitations....guess this time he really got scared coz the IV verapamil took a while to kick in...HR racing at 180bpm.......thank God nothing serious happened...especially when he was alone at home.....(mum being the 'party animal' decided to go to Malacca with her sisters and was in KL at that time)...........
Thank you Lord for watching over him!!!
Thank you Lord for watching over him!!!
Monday, February 9, 2009
What have I become????
Things have been moving along over the past 1 month since my last entry here....feel less angsty at work...probably coz the work I'm doing now is lighter, and yes - more brainless.... but suddenly dawned upon me of what a 'monster' I've become since joining this department......
Just realised that days are filled with:
- bitching about other people who can't work / incompetent
- grumbling about how bad life is
- being negative all the time
- feeling desperate that all my friends are attached/ married/ having kids whilst I remain in the 'single' category
- being a 'nasty' and unforgiving person
" Father forgive me when I lose my focus ....sometimes I even forget what that is.....to be more like Jesus.......help me to be more understanding....to show grace...to forgive others ... and also myself when others/ I make a mistake.....help me to be more like You.....I dun wanna be like the rest of the world....it may be acceptable by their standards, but I know that it is not according to Yours....Change me from the inside , Lord!"
Just realised that days are filled with:
- bitching about other people who can't work / incompetent
- grumbling about how bad life is
- being negative all the time
- feeling desperate that all my friends are attached/ married/ having kids whilst I remain in the 'single' category
- being a 'nasty' and unforgiving person
" Father forgive me when I lose my focus ....sometimes I even forget what that is.....to be more like Jesus.......help me to be more understanding....to show grace...to forgive others ... and also myself when others/ I make a mistake.....help me to be more like You.....I dun wanna be like the rest of the world....it may be acceptable by their standards, but I know that it is not according to Yours....Change me from the inside , Lord!"
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
JUST WAIT
Found this nice poster in the cath lab where I work....found it truly inspirational!
JUST WAIT
Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried;
Quietly, patiently, lovingly, God replied,
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate....
and the Master so gently said " Wait."
"Wait? you say wait?" my indignant reply.
"Lord, I need answers , I need to know why!"
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?
By faith I have asked, and I'm claiming your Word.
My future and all to which I relate
hangs in the balance and you tell me to wait?
I'm needing a 'yes', a go-ahead sign.
Or even a 'no', to which I'll resign.
You promised, dear Lord, that if we believe,
we need but to ask, and we shall receive.
Lord, I've been asking, and this is my cry;
I'm weary of asking! I need a reply.
Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate
as my Master replied again, "Wait."
So I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut,
and grumbled to God, "So, I'm waiting.....for what?"
He seemed then to kneel, and His eyes met with mine....
and He tenderly said, " I could give you a sign. I could shake the heavens and darken the sun. I could raise the dead and cause mountains to run.
I could give all you seek and pleased you would be.
You'd have what you want , but you wouldn't know Me.
You'd not know the depth of My love for each saint.
You'd not know the power that I give to the faint.
You'd not learn to see through the clouds of despair;
you'd not learn to trust just by knowing I'm there.
You'd not know the joy of resting in Me
when darkness and silence are all you can see.
You'd never experience the fullness of love
when the peace of My spirit descends like a dove.
You would know that I give, and I save, for a start,
but you'd not know the depth of the beat of My heart.
The glow of My comfort late into the night,
the faith that I give when you walk without sight.
The depth that's beyond getting just waht you ask
from an infinite God who makes what you have last.
You'd never know should your pain quickly flee,
what it means that My grace is sufficient for thee.
Yes, your dearest dreams overnight would come true,
but oh, the loss if I lost what I'm doing in you.
So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see
that the greatest of gifts is to truly know me.
And though oft My answers seem terribly late,
My most precious answer of all is still.....WAIT'.
Sums up most of what I have felt over the last few months.....heh....
JUST WAIT
Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried;
Quietly, patiently, lovingly, God replied,
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate....
and the Master so gently said " Wait."
"Wait? you say wait?" my indignant reply.
"Lord, I need answers , I need to know why!"
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?
By faith I have asked, and I'm claiming your Word.
My future and all to which I relate
hangs in the balance and you tell me to wait?
I'm needing a 'yes', a go-ahead sign.
Or even a 'no', to which I'll resign.
You promised, dear Lord, that if we believe,
we need but to ask, and we shall receive.
Lord, I've been asking, and this is my cry;
I'm weary of asking! I need a reply.
Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate
as my Master replied again, "Wait."
So I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut,
and grumbled to God, "So, I'm waiting.....for what?"
He seemed then to kneel, and His eyes met with mine....
and He tenderly said, " I could give you a sign. I could shake the heavens and darken the sun. I could raise the dead and cause mountains to run.
I could give all you seek and pleased you would be.
You'd have what you want , but you wouldn't know Me.
You'd not know the depth of My love for each saint.
You'd not know the power that I give to the faint.
You'd not learn to see through the clouds of despair;
you'd not learn to trust just by knowing I'm there.
You'd not know the joy of resting in Me
when darkness and silence are all you can see.
You'd never experience the fullness of love
when the peace of My spirit descends like a dove.
You would know that I give, and I save, for a start,
but you'd not know the depth of the beat of My heart.
The glow of My comfort late into the night,
the faith that I give when you walk without sight.
The depth that's beyond getting just waht you ask
from an infinite God who makes what you have last.
You'd never know should your pain quickly flee,
what it means that My grace is sufficient for thee.
Yes, your dearest dreams overnight would come true,
but oh, the loss if I lost what I'm doing in you.
So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see
that the greatest of gifts is to truly know me.
And though oft My answers seem terribly late,
My most precious answer of all is still.....WAIT'.
Sums up most of what I have felt over the last few months.....heh....
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